Technology & expert advocacy can achieve the best persuasive effect from a schedule of loss, explains Chris Gutteridge
In personal injury litigation, the balance of probabilities is king and the art of persuasion can secure you the keys to the kingdom. As Baroness Hale put it in Gregg v Scott [2005] UKHL 2 “more likely than not” is a matter of persuasion, not of proof.
There is a particular emphasis on the importance of persuasion in litigation involving an injury which has changed the course of a claimant’s future working life or, in the case of a catastrophic injury, brought that working life to a premature end. In these cases, the trial judge is asked to predict the future, sometimes with very little to go on. How is a court to decide whether an injured infant would have become a banker or a bin collector? Whether an injured graduate would have excelled or floundered? The findings of fact made by a judge faced with such a dilemma can make hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of difference to an injured claimant.
Ward v Allies
A
