On 19 April the annual conference of APIL, the Association of Personal Injury lawyers was treated to what one of its founder members, Roger Pannone, described as “probably the best I've ever heard from a president”.
The speech was made by APIL’s incoming president Karl Tonks and it took the form of a sustained attack on insurance companies, the Government and LASPO.
He accused the insurance companies of wasting millions in legal costs and then passing on the costs through higher premiums. That, he said, is "…not just dysfunctional, it’s also disingenuous”.
He said that: “Government has one key responsibility which underpins everything – to listen. Not just to the insurance industry."
He added that: "Dying men are subsidising the insurance industry."
Turning his attention to the Prime Minister and his attack on what he called the health and safety ‘monster’, he said: "Mr Cameron, your attitude to health and safety…is plain wrong.”
Tonks is an expert in occupational health and safety litigation and is head of the employers' liability department at Fenton's.
On LASPO, he argued that the voices of those injured at work and in road accidents were not being heard. If we are all supposed to be “in this together”, he argued, then they are the people who, most of all, deserve to be listened to and heard.
He added there is “much to be fought for” on the issue of qualified one-way costs shifting. The Government’s reliance on people taking out before-the-event insurance will create a two-tier division between those who can afford cover and those who cannot.