Click here to sue: Online cases that don’t need lawyers
FAMILIES ripped off by holiday companies or sold cars that keep breaking down will soon be able to sue online under a plan put forward by judges yesterday.
A ‘click-for-compensation’ court should be set up to deal with all financial claims up to £25,000 apart from personal injury cases, they say.
The ‘ online court’ would be able to deal with a wide range of cases such as those brought by homeowners who have suffered at the hands of cowboy builders, families in dispute with neighbours, and people pursuing everyday damages claims.
It should be designed to have no lawyers, no large bills for legal costs, and no traditional trials, according to a report by appeal court judge Lord Justice Briggs.
Instead in a homeowner’s dispute with a builder, for example, a county court judge would make a decision based on evidence emailed in by both sides, and any hearing could be held over a phone or video link. If the internet justice scheme goes ahead, many cases might be decided without even a judge. They could be handled by a civil servant with the title of ‘case officer’, who would try to persuade the parties to agree a deal before a judge became involved.
The online court plan is part of sweeping reforms of the civil courts ordered by senior judges.
The idea is to give millions the chance to get justice through the courts without facing high legal bills, wealthy opponents with expensive lawyers, or the threat of being bankrupted by their opponents’ costs if they lose.
Lord Justice Briggs said the online court ‘would be the first court ever to be designed in this country, from start to finish, for use by litigants without lawyers’.
He added: ‘It is unique among attempts to assist litigants without lawyers because it seeks for the first time in this country to take advantage of the facilities offered by modern IT at all stages in its process.’
His report said that the existing civil courts are ‘designed by lawyers for use by lawyers’ and for ordinary people they are ‘disproportionately expensive and therefore unaffordable’. Lord Justice Briggs said this was ‘a truly shocking state of affairs’. He added that the law
‘Shocking state of affairs’
is now so complicated that it cannot be understood by nonlawyers and the problem was worsening because ‘whereas historically law was created by Parliament and judges, it is now created in addition by the EU legislature and by the everexpanding jurisprudence emanating mainly from Strasbourg about human rights’.
Some legal procedures can already be carried out online. They include the settlement by mediation of small claims cases worth up to £10,000, and claims by utilities and other large companies over unpaid bills, which are dealt with through a computerised county court ‘bulk centre’ in Northampton.
The report – known as the Civil Courts Structure Review – was ordered last year by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, and the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson.
It said the online court should not deal with personal injury cases, because they are likely to involve insurance companies, which will invariably use teams of specialist lawyers, and they also usually need to weigh up complex medical evidence.
It would handle straightforward cases, and if anyone involved in a case decided to use lawyers, the legal professionals would have to fill in the same online forms as everybody else. They could not claim their fees back from the losers should they win.
A district judge would be able to order a face-to-face hearing, which would not involve lawyers, if he or she considered it necessary. There would be a right to appeal. The proposals will go out for consultation.