Legal Fees

OptiPlus

If someone suffers personal injuries in a retail environment and is awarded an amount of money by PIAB that either they or the respondent don't agree to and it proceeds to court where court costs are incurred along with solicitor and possibly barrister fees and the injured party is awarded compensation can the injured party have all the above costs paid for by the respondent (or their insurance company) generally? Thanks.

*Compensation would be approx €10k.

Lenar3556

Typically the costs follow the event, so if the individual is successful in their claim the costs will be paid by the other side.

It is more common that these matters are settled between the parties at some point in advance of a court determination. Sometimes as part of those settlement agreements each party agrees to cover their own costs to date.

Claw Hammer

Even if a costs order is made in court it is likely that not all of the claimants costs will be paid by the defence, particularly in the District Court where an award of 10k would be made. The PIAB application fee is never paid and sometimes some of the medical costs are not paid. In addition the scale fee for the solicitor may not cover all of his work, particularly if there are multiple appearances or consultations.

In my limited dealings with the legal profession, they fight tooth and nail to not have costs awarded.

Solicitors and lawyers are prone to over-exaggerating how much their costs actually are, so that if/when costs are awarded against the other party, they can charge higher whack for it than if you were paying for it yourself. I've had my legal reps hand me over-inflated statements during legal cases, only to say they'll revise the amounts if/when we lost the case or if we settled without costs.