BS: Litigation Insurance

Subject: BS: Litigation Insurance
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 17 Jul 19 - 06:06 AM

I am in a discussion on another platform about the impact of reduced access to legal aid on voluntary sector Law Centres, and the wider issues around access to justice.

What I have noticed is that there is a rise in financial services in UK providing BTE and ATE insurance. Years ago, these was mainly around professional indemnity.

In the 80s their was a common conception (or misconception?) that everyone in the US can expect to sue or be sued at some point in their lifetime. I don't know how apocryphal that is.

What does concern me, in the UK, is that access to Legal Aid is becoming more and more restrictive, and the cynic in me suggests that part of this is to enable another growth area in financial services - or privatisation of justice. (ie you are only entitled to justice if:

(a) You are skilled in litigation
(b) You can afford to pay for justice
(c) That justice is conditional on contributing to the wealth of financial service providers.

That also disturbs me that we are heading for a two-tax system - once (social tax) which is used to pay for public services and another (commercial tax) paid to corporations for other services, where 'evading' the latter could result in prohibitive costs if these services are ever needed.

Socially, this would be a massive backward step - even towards when historically firefighters would only put out fires on building that had the prerequisite fire mark.