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Muddy Ford wrote:

If it had been a bus, car or truck the pedestrians probably wouldn't have crossed. They have contempt for cyclists but are not so stupid with vehicles.

So true. I get this all the time with dog walkers on country lanes. If I'm driving the dog gets pulled into the hedge as soon as they hear the engine. If I'm cycling, ringing the bell or even having a coughing fit often has zero effect. I end up coming to a complete standstill and saying "excuse me" politely, before they clear some space for me to pass.

quiff wrote:

I imagine the £100k claimed will be mainly the solicitors' fees and barristers' fees, plus a relatively small amount to cover the court fee the claimant paid to bring the claim (likely less than £1,000). The court is mainly funded from the public purse.

Not meaning to pick an argument, but my point is that when you said "this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial" that seems to imply "the court" and its "expectations" are what decides the level of costs.  But from this it seems it is in fact the barristers fees that determine the costs - which presumably are down to the barrister and his firm?  Or maybe down to the plaintiff's choice of which barristers to use?

All seems a bit odd that the pedestrian knocked over engages lawyers who rack up these massive  costs, for what seems in the end to benefit nobody but those lawywers.   Either counter-sue or quit immediately, I suppose is the lesson?

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

quiff wrote:

I imagine the £100k claimed will be mainly the solicitors' fees and barristers' fees, plus a relatively small amount to cover the court fee the claimant paid to bring the claim (likely less than £1,000). The court is mainly funded from the public purse.

 

Not meaning to pick an argument, but my point is that when you said "this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial" that seems to imply "the court" and its "expectations" are what decides the level of costs.  But from this it seems it is in fact the barristers fees that determine the costs - which presumably are down to the barrister and his firm?  Or maybe down to the plaintiff's choice of which barristers to use?

 

All seems a bit odd that the pedestrian knocked over engages lawyers who rack up these massive  costs, for what seems in the end to benefit nobody but those lawywers.   Either counter-sue or quit immediately, I suppose is the lesson?

Or settle, it makes sure the lawyers don't win

Here's a guide to Part 36 for anyone who's interested. It was designed to put pressure on people to settle but, yes, it can be a bit of a roulette wheel.

https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/quickguides--...

Essentially, if you fail to "beat" a Part 36 offer you're in a world of pain. There is little doubt the Court will reduce the level of costs to a lower level. But the existence of the Part 36 offers makes reducing it by a substantial amount way way harder.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

quiff wrote:

I imagine the £100k claimed will be mainly the solicitors' fees and barristers' fees, plus a relatively small amount to cover the court fee the claimant paid to bring the claim (likely less than £1,000). The court is mainly funded from the public purse.

 

Not meaning to pick an argument, but my point is that when you said "this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial" that seems to imply "the court" and its "expectations" are what decides the level of costs.  But from this it seems it is in fact the barristers fees that determine the costs - which presumably are down to the barrister and his firm?  Or maybe down to the plaintiff's choice of which barristers to use?

Sorry, I didn't catch your drift before. Bendertherobot has explained, but basically the £100k costs are the claimant's lawyers' fees, but the court decides how much of those costs the defendant has to pay. It will very rarely be all of them, and the claimant (or her insurers) will have to pay the rest. But in a nutshell, if the defendant has ignored a sensible Part 36 offer to settle then the chances are the court will order him to pay a higher proportion of the claimant's costs. Of course he wasn't legally represented until late 2018, so may have been unaware of these consequences.     

quiff wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

quiff wrote:

I imagine the £100k claimed will be mainly the solicitors' fees and barristers' fees, plus a relatively small amount to cover the court fee the claimant paid to bring the claim (likely less than £1,000). The court is mainly funded from the public purse.

 

Not meaning to pick an argument, but my point is that when you said "this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial" that seems to imply "the court" and its "expectations" are what decides the level of costs.  But from this it seems it is in fact the barristers fees that determine the costs - which presumably are down to the barrister and his firm?  Or maybe down to the plaintiff's choice of which barristers to use?

Sorry, I didn't catch your drift before. Bendertherobot has explained, but basically the £100k costs are the claimant's lawyers' fees, but the court decides how much of those costs the defendant has to pay. It will very rarely be all of them, and the claimant (or her insurers) will have to pay the rest. But in a nutshell, if the defendant has ignored a sensible Part 36 offer to settle then the chances are the court will order him to pay a higher proportion of the claimant's costs. Of course he wasn't legally represented until late 2018, so may have been unaware of these consequences.     

OK, that explains it.

  Though it leads to another thought - if the person suing you is someone of limited means, and not insured (as pedestrians presumably are not) they won't want to risk being lumbered with any of the fees of a high-end lawyer, so they'll either not bother suing or they'll pick Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons, who will ony run up a small bill.

  Ergo, how much you end up getting clobbered for is going to be proportional to how wealthy is the person you collided with, no?  If they have a high-end taste in lawyers and deep pockets themselves the bills will be higher if you eventually lose.

  Or does the court take into account how extravagent the plaintiff's legal spending was when deciding the share of damages?

Is another lesson "only crash into people without much money"?

(Along with 'get the right household insurance' and 'counter-sue or settle immediately')

Griff500 wrote:

Not sure of the relevance of a barrister giving a one sided view of a case after the judge has already said his client was 50% at fault. I'd rather have heard how he justifies the £100k cost claim!

I think his intent is to give some more context to the 50:50 apportionment of liability, and explain why the cyclist gets nothing. While he doesn't deal with the costs directly, he does reveal that the cyclist refused / ignored two Part 36 offers to settle. Unfortunately this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial.  

quiff wrote:

Griff500 wrote:

Not sure of the relevance of a barrister giving a one sided view of a case after the judge has already said his client was 50% at fault. I'd rather have heard how he justifies the £100k cost claim!

I think his intent is to give some more context to the 50:50 apportionment of liability, and explain why the cyclist gets nothing. While he doesn't deal with the costs directly, he does reveal that the cyclist refused / ignored two Part 36 offers to settle. Unfortunately this will likely increase the level of costs he is liable for, as the court expects parties to try to resolve disputes without a trial.  

How much of the £100k goes  to 'the court' and how much goes to this barrister?

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?
What would we all do? We'd slow down or stop and wait for a clear space in which to continue our journey. It's not hard to avoid hitting pedestrians, you just have to slow down and give them space.

Exactly. I'm glad I didn't contribute to "his" crowdfunding which would just go to pay for the claimant's legal team.

Also, relying on an air horn presupposes that none of the pedestrians were deaf which you can't guarantee.

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?
What would we all do? We'd slow down or stop and wait for a clear space in which to continue our journey. It's not hard to avoid hitting pedestrians, you just have to slow down and give them space.

It is interesting, because in the original coverage I'd read (or presumed, not sure...) that she'd followed the herd out into the road and was the last to cross.

This story now leads me to believe that there were loads of pedestrians out in the road (all just not-hearing-a-car-coming-so-it-must-be-safe-to-cross, presumably?).

In which case I change my answer, and perhaps trying to thread through the crowd might not have been the wisest decision...?

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?
What would we all do? We'd slow down or stop and wait for a clear space in which to continue our journey. It's not hard to avoid hitting pedestrians, you just have to slow down and give them space.

There were 3 other witnesses who said the cyclist didn't do that and the phone using pedestrian was entirely at fault, so we can't say for sure this one witness is correct.
50:50 probably the correct decision. Still doesn't excuse the lawyers extortionate costs claim, abusing the cyclist's failure to counter claim or have legal representation.

CaribbeanQueen wrote:

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?
What would we all do? We'd slow down or stop and wait for a clear space in which to continue our journey. It's not hard to avoid hitting pedestrians, you just have to slow down and give them space.

There were 3 other witnesses who said the cyclist didn't do that and the phone using pedestrian was entirely at fault, so we can't say for sure this one witness is correct. 50:50 probably the correct decision. Still doesn't excuse the lawyers extortionate costs claim, abusing the cyclist's failure to counter claim or have legal representation.

Yeah, it's the 99% of lawyers that give the rest a bad name.

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?

This was the account given by one witness, Mr H. The judge found this witness's contemporaneous voice memo "sounded like it was self-serving, with something in mind". The cyclist's own evidence (as summarised by the judge) was: 

"Coming down London Bridge, he was freewheeling to lights which were red.  He slowed, allowing them to turn to green...  He said he could see from the point that he approached lights on the London Bridge side of the junction that there were pedestrians crossing.  Therefore, he sounded his horn... The Defendant said he continued freewheeling into the junction. Pedestrians appeared to notice the horn. Once they cleared, he pedalled again and accelerated as it was uphill on the other side of the junction.  The Claimant was crossing the road on her mobile phone, and at some point when he was close to her, she looked up and was startled." The judge found "it was evident [the cyclist] had thought of how pedestrians were not aware of traffic coming as there was no signal on the crossing.  He gave every impression of being a reasonable road user. This was difficult to square with the picture presented by Mr H. "

I ride this junction every day and I still have a lot of sympathy with the cyclist - yes, you slow down and make allowances at this junction because it's so busy with pedestrians, but if someone steps out on you 2-3 metres away (which is what he said in his statement to the police) your options are  very limited. 

quiff wrote:

darrenleroy wrote:

Why would anyone continue to ride at 20mph whilst sounding an air horn and accelerate if there is clearly a throng of pedestrians crossing the road ahead?

This was the account given by one witness, Mr H. The judge found this witness's contemporaneous voice memo "sounded like it was self-serving, with something in mind". The cyclist's own evidence (as summarised by the judge) was: 

"Coming down London Bridge, he was freewheeling to lights which were red.  He slowed, allowing them to turn to green...  He said he could see from the point that he approached lights on the London Bridge side of the junction that there were pedestrians crossing.  Therefore, he sounded his horn... The Defendant said he continued freewheeling into the junction. Pedestrians appeared to notice the horn. Once they cleared, he pedalled again and accelerated as it was uphill on the other side of the junction.  The Claimant was crossing the road on her mobile phone, and at some point when he was close to her, she looked up and was startled." The judge found "it was evident [the cyclist] had thought of how pedestrians were not aware of traffic coming as there was no signal on the crossing.  He gave every impression of being a reasonable road user. This was difficult to square with the picture presented by Mr H. "

I ride this junction every day and I still have a lot of sympathy with the cyclist - yes, you slow down and make allowances at this junction because it's so busy with pedestrians, but if someone steps out on you 2-3 metres away (which is what he said in his statement to the police) your options are  very limited. 

Reading this account, it feels sometimes like listening to a Boris Johnson interview, the facts change that often. 

I too ride that junction every single day, and you only have to go through there once or twice, to know that it's dangerous, for the reasons I cited earlier on today: there is no provision for pedestrians to cross safely, as there is no 'red man' or 'green man'.  The only lights at the junction of London Bridge, Cannon Street and King William Street is for, let's call them wheeled road users.   So you come off London Bridge and you get the green to go either left onto Cannon Street, or else straight on onto King William Street (the other traffic has a red at that point, taking you up Gracechurch Street). 

It's also worth pointing out that as you arrive at the lights at the northern side of London Bridge.... here ... 

https://goo.gl/maps/oDXrQKN9JGoMq57g8

.. there's an upward slope.  This doesn't necessarily mean he's telling porkies about 'freewheeling', but when I cross the bridge, I can coast to a halt there, and only use my brakes at the last second, to bring myself to a complete halt. 

Bottom line: peds are soft and squishy, and we should really do all we can to avoid hurting them.  I don't think this guy did so.