What is a high court hearing?

breda1970

when a court date is set down and agreed,does the plaintiff solicitor have to say how much compensation they are seeking or can that be left open because it the high court?

breda1970

Is it just because the case is in the high court it can be between €40k- ....
They don’t need to give an exact figure?

Credit Checker Moose

Nope. That is for the judge to decide.

Peregrinus

breda1970 wrote: »

when a court date is set down and agreed,does the plaintiff solicitor have to say how much compensation they are seeking or can that be left open because it the high court?

Depends on the nature of the claim. If this is a commercial, breach-of-contract type dispute, the claim is for losses resulting from the non-performance of the contract, and it may be possible to quantify those with reasonable precision, so both sides will know how much is in issue. Whereas if this is a personal injury case you'll be able to quantify your medical expenses, loss of earnings, etc incurred to date, and make a reasonable projection of future expenses/loss of earnings, but there'll also be a claim for further damages for pain and suffering, and that's pretty open-ended. You don't claim a specific sum; the court fixes a sum having heard the evidence in the case.

hullaballoo

breda1970 wrote: »

when a court date is set down and agreed,does the plaintiff solicitor have to say how much compensation they are seeking or can that be left open because it the high court?

In theory at least, both the plaintiff and defendant in personal injuries cases are obliged to formally offer settlement terms by virtue of s 17 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004. This requires in mandatory terms that the plaintiff and defendant write their proposed settlement terms down, send them to each other and then lodge the notices in Court prior to the hearing date.

The Court is then supposed to determine the issues without reference to the s 17 offers and then take account of the reasonableness or otherwise of the offers when dealing with costs.

For some reason, it doesn't happen in practice to the best of my knowledge at least.

breda1970

hullaballoo wrote: »

In theory at least, both the plaintiff and defendant in personal injuries cases are obliged to formally offer settlement terms by virtue of s 17 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004. This requires in mandatory terms that the plaintiff and defendant write their proposed settlement terms down, send them to each other and then lodge the notices in Court prior to the hearing date.

The Court is then supposed to determine the issues without reference to the s 17 offers and then take account of the reasonableness or otherwise of the offers when dealing with costs.

For some reason, it doesn't happen in practice to the best of my knowledge at least.

So to get a hearing date,a judge has to look over everything to make sure all is in order and both parties are there to agree on a date??
at this stage would the judge not ask the parties to try and sort it out?

4ensic15

breda1970 wrote: »

So to get a hearing date,a judge has to look over everything to make sure all is in order and both parties are there to agree on a date??
at this stage would the judge not ask the parties to try and sort it out?

In a personal injury case, nothing of the kind happens. Judges don't look at anything until the hearing.

breda1970

Can any dr or professional that treated you for your injuries be summoned to court to give evidence?
Even if they have not done a medical legal report?

Peregrinus

breda1970 wrote: »

Can any dr or professional that treated you for your injuries be summoned to court to give evidence?
Even if they have not done a medical legal report?

Yes. But if you haven't got a report from him you don't know what evidence he's going to give. And if he feels aggreived about being summoned without the usual procedures having been followed, he may not be motivated to give evidence in a friendly way. So you'd want some unusual circumstances before you would think this was a wise thing to do.

4ensic15

breda1970 wrote: »

Can any dr or professional that treated you for your injuries be summoned to court to give evidence?
Even if they have not done a medical legal report?

Medical reports have to be exchanged in advance. Each side needs to know what medical evidence the other is relying on. The doctors who provided treatment will have recorded their observations which will have been passed on to the doctors who will be giving opinion evidence. It is unlikely that anything recorded by the treating doctor would be disputed.

breda1970

so if a medical expert wrote up their report last year and i had scan last week which showed up an unexpected injury from the accident,will that bit of new evidence be given to the specialist who wrote the report so he can add it?
or would it just be used on the day in court?

Reggie Junior

breda1970 wrote: »

Is it just because the case is in the high court it can be between €40k- ....
They don’t need to give an exact figure?

This wouldn’t even cover the deposit on the Landini.

Mod
Pls keep on topic, OK?

4ensic15

breda1970 wrote: »

so if a medical expert wrote up their report last year and i had scan last week which showed up an unexpected injury from the accident,will that bit of new evidence be given to the specialist who wrote the report so he can add it?
or would it just be used on the day in court?

You would have to get a new report incorporating the new evidence and pass it to the other side. They would have to decide whether to accept it or engage an expert of their own to challenge it. You can't turn up in court pulling injuries from a hat.

Mrcaramelchoc

Fascinating thread.Can i ask two things.
In a personal injury high court case if costs are awarded against you is there a ball park figure as to what they might be?

And can anyone at any time walk into the court sit down and watch proceedings?

Peregrinus

Mrcaramelchoc wrote: »

Fascinating thread.Can i ask two things.
In a personal injury high court case if costs are awarded against you is there a ball park figure as to what they might be?

No. Depends entirely on how long and complex the proceedings have been. The only thing you can be confident of is that they'll be much higher than you think they ought to be.

Mrcaramelchoc wrote: »

And can anyone at any time walk into the court sit down and watch proceedings?

Usually, yes. The court has power to close the proceedings to the public, but exercising that power in a personal injury case would be vanishingly rare.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Mrcaramelchoc wrote: »

Fascinating thread.Can i ask two things.
In a personal injury high court case if costs are awarded against you is there a ball park figure as to what they might be?

Only on personal experience. Figure €10,000 for each day the case lasts in the High Court.

Roughest ballpark possible. Could be anywhere from a quarter that to double that.

Mrcaramelchoc

Can it be a draw in cases like this?can the judge just say i can't decide im not giving anything to anyone?

Peregrinus

Mrcaramelchoc wrote: »

Can it be a draw in cases like this?can the judge just say i can't decide im not giving anything to anyone?

No. He has to hand down a judgment.

The deal is that there's an onus of proof. It's up to the plaintiff to prove that, on the balance of probabilities, the wrong was committed/the contract was breached/whatever. If the evidence is confusing or incomplete to such an extent that the judge simply cannot say what happened, then the plaintiff has not discharged the onus of proof on him. He loses, and the defendant wins.

A case can be a "draw" in the sense that the judge might say, e.g., "I find for the plaintiff and I am awarding damages", but he might disagree with the plaintiff's arguments about/calculation of the damages due, and award much less than the plaintiff was hoping or expected (and than the defendant feared or expected).

breda1970

If a personal injury case does go to trial,does the judge look at all the medical evidence or just the legal medical reports?

Claw Hammer

breda1970 wrote: »

If a personal injury case does go to trial,does the judge look at all the medical evidence or just the legal medical reports?

What other evidence will there be?

Credit Checker Moose

You should really be asking your solicitor all this.

breda1970

Your right,the solicitor should be answering these questions,but doesn’t.....
These questions just come into your head days after chatting to them.
I was just wondering is it just the medical legal report shown to the judge or do the plaintiffs solicitor try and put as much evidence as they can in front of him??

FreudianSlippers

Doesn't answer questions that come into your head days later? What awful solicitor can't read minds?!

breda1970

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Doesn't answer questions that come into your head days later? What awful solicitor can't read
Iam not saying that,but the reason I asked it here is because I thought this is what this forum is about...people with experience/knowledge will answer and share there experience,others that just don’t will try and be funny.