Greedy Lawyers Abuse Compensation Scheme
Posted by News Editor
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

'Greedy' lawyers to repay victims

By Andrew Norfolk

Article Published in The Times 16th December 2005

Inquiries that followed The Times

• The Serious Fraud Squad

• The Department of Trade Industry

• The Law Society

SOME of the country’s most successful law firms, which grew rich by exploiting sick miners, were told by the Government last night to repay more than £50 million that they “outrageously” sliced from their clients’ compensation.

Ministers lambasted the firms for deducting money from payments to elderly pitmen suffering from chronic chest diseases as a result of their work.

" They accused the firms of manipulating the world’s largest personal injury compensation scheme to create a “gravy train” for solicitors. The Government was responding to an independent review prompted by disclosures in The Times about the huge earnings made by lawyers from its £7.5 billion scheme.

More than a dozen firms have been paid more than £10 million by the Department of Trade and Industry for settling claims. Six have earned more than £30 million and the top three, more than £50 million.

Yet some firms have successfully demanded money from their claimants, who suffer from chronic lung disease or a crippling hand condition, in addition to the fees they were already being paid by the DTI.

Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, said that he was seeking an urgent meeting with the Law Society to discuss how the miners’ claims had been handled.

The move has been welcomed by miners’ action groups but many said that they were still bitter at the way they had been treated.

“They shouldn’t have deducted it in the first place and it’s right that they should pay it back,” said Max Brown, a retired miner who had more than £1,000 deducted from his compensation. “At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.”

The external review, published yesterday, was ordered by the DTI in July after disclosures in The Times about the financial relationship between a number of law firms and leading officials at the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. The disclosures are now the subject of an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office.

Mr Wicks said: “If anyone has in any way been misinformed or hoodwinked into making a contribution to a trade union on the grounds that this is paying for their legal costs, when the legal costs are actually being paid by my department, then I think that’s outrageous. That’s very, very wrong.” He said that he expected the Law Society to rise to the challenge and “be seized by the importance of taking these issues forward rigorously and proactively”.

The report largely exonerates the DTI from any blame for running of the scheme, which was set up in 1999.

It concludes: “Claimants should now be able to seek the reimbursement of any fees they may have paid [to solicitors] in the past if, when they made their claims, they were not told that they could receive a similar service elsewhere [from another firm of solicitors] at no extra cost.”

Mr Wicks said that he fully accepted the recommendation and cautioned that the deductions made by solicitors on behalf of the UDM and the National Union of Mineworkers were also under scrutiny.

The Times disclosed last month that Raleys, a Yorkshire-based firm that has been paid £53 million in DTI fees for its work on 28,000 claims, also deducted an estimated £10 million from miners’ compensation on behalf of the NUM. The firm faces claims that it mislead clients into believing that the union was funding their claim.

Mr Wicks said that he would seek an urgent meeting with the Law Society, which is already conducting the largest professional misconduct investigation in its history into more than 30 solicitors’ firms involved in the coal health scheme.

“There have been some pretty dodgy goings-on and that’s what we need to remedy with the Law Society,” he said.

If every solicitor who has deducted a slice of the compensation awarded to sick miners or their relatives were forced to pay it back, the final costs to the legal profession would be at least £50 million. Some law firms have already agreed, voluntarily, to refund their clients.

A Law Society spokesman said last night that it would welcome a meeting with the Energy Minister but was already dealing with the issue to the “maximum extent” of its powers.

The review team, headed by Stephen Boys Smith, a retired senior Home Office civil servant, also criticised the level of fees paid by the DTI to solicitors, given the modest level of work involved in each claim.

Estimates for the final cost of the scheme suggest that £4.5 billion will be paid in compensation to miners but that a further £1.6 billion will have gone to solicitors in legal fees.

Mr Wicks said: “I think anyone would look rather aghast at the idea that only 65 per cent of the total expenditure will go to miners and their relatives.

He said that he took the report’s recommendations “very seriously indeed”.

See leading article

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Prison Vigils
Posted by News Editor
Sunday, December 18, 2005

We are grateful to all those who took part in prison vigils throughout England and Wales yesterday. This year the weather was kinder and the turnout encouraging despite competition from seasonal events. At each location all falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned carers and teachers throughout the UK and worldwide were remembered either by name, by candlelight or silent acts of remembrance. We are grateful to all those who took part.

Thankyou

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BBC Radio Programme
Posted by News Editor
Friday, December 16, 2005

Just to let you know FACT has been collaborating with BBC Radio Five who are doing a programme about false allegations as part of the Stephen Nolan Show which takes place on Sunday next starting at 10:00pm (evening time) and lasting for three hours.

A lot of work has gone into this programme behind the scenes and whilst we expect both sides of the argument will be put we are confident that our side of the issue will feature prominently".

There is also a phone line to ring for those who want to make a comment during the programme. The number is 0500 0909 693

Please note due to a change of schedule this programme was broadcast on Saturday evening not Sunday. We are sorry if this has caused any inconvenience.  If you were not able to hear it live you can hear it on the internet for a limited period.

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Foster Carers Speak Out
Posted by News Editor
Tuesday, December 06, 2005

In her 15 years as a foster carer Judy Drake never thought it was a job for someone who wanted an easy life. But in the past two years, she has lost 60,000 in income, has nearly lost her home and is 25,000 in debt because of false allegations.

Unusually, it was the local authority for which she fosters that made the allegations against her - allegations which began after she questioned an instruction from the authority about how two of her three foster children were to be treated. She was then said by the council to have claimed that the children had been sexually abused and suffered from various illnesses. It also alleged she had favoured one of the children and had not given balanced views about the two children to their potential adopters.

She has since discovered that some of the files relating to her case have gone missing, some have been rewritten and parts have been deleted. "I'm down as attending meetings I was never at," she says.

The independent investigation exonerated her but the authority has refused to sign the resulting report. Three months ago she went to the ombudsman. (more)
Acknowledgement Community Care

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Recent Parliamentary Questions
Posted by News Editor
Friday, December 02, 2005

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Nun's conviction for child rape overturned
Posted by News Editor
Friday, December 02, 2005

The prosecution of a former nun for rape in a case involving evidence from a witness known to be unreliable should not have been brought, a judge has said.

The Court of Criminal Appeal earlier this month declared a miscarriage of justice in relation to the wrongful conviction of Nora Wall for the rape and indecent assault of a 10-year-old girl in a care home in Waterford.

The three judges who yesterday gave reasons for their decision also said there had been an "unfortunate breakdown in communications or systems failure" between the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Chief State Solicitor, the Garda Síochána and prosecuting counsel. This constituted "a serious defect in the administration of justice brought about however unintentionally in this instance by the agents of the State".

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said the prosecution which took place and involved the tendering of corroborative evidence by a witness known to be unreliable should not have been brought.

Ms Wall, formerly Sr Dominic, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment six years ago.

Mr Justice Kearns said newly discovered facts showed there had been a miscarriage of justice. These included a crucial witness at Ms Wall's trial, Patricia Phelan, who admitted to gardaí and another nun that she had lied about having witnessed Ms Wall hold down a young girl while a man raped her.

The proceedings arose after the June 1999 convictions of Ms Wall and Paul McCabe were overturned a month later by the Court of Criminal Appeal with no opposition from the DPP. Both had been convicted of raping Regina Walsh between January 1988 and December 1989, when she was 10, and of an indecent assault charge. Mr McCabe was jailed for 12 years and Ms Wall for life.

Mr Justice Kearns said the evidence in the Wall case went "to the point where it is now established that Patricia Phelan, on January 10th, 1997, made a statement to the Garda Síochána which was untrue and at the trial gave entirely fabricated evidence, in circumstances which give rise to a compelling inference of collusion between her and the complainant, resulting in the fabrication of evidence which in the judgment of this court would render it unsafe to leave any of the evidence of either girl to a jury."

The case was almost equally noteworthy for the significant failures of communication between the various offices and persons concerned in the prosecution.

Mr Justice Kearns said it was now accepted by the DPP that there was significant non-disclosure, including the information that Regina Walsh had made but not pursued an allegation of rape in England and the non-disclosure of her material psychiatric history.

Ms Wall was further prejudiced by evidence that Ms Walsh had recalled alleged episodes of rape by reference to flashbacks but there was no scientific evidence adduced to explain the phenomenon of flashbacks.

In acceding to Ms Wall's application, the court did not find it necessary to distinguish in terms of gravity between the variously newly discovered facts, which it was satisfied showed there had been a miscarriage of justice.

The court therefore granted the certificate sought.

© The Irish Times

We are grateful for the Alliance Support Group  for providing this information. Also for their follow up story

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Paris Court Overturns Paedophilia Convictions Against Six People
Posted by News Editor
Friday, December 02, 2005

PARIS (Reuters) - A Paris court overturned paedophilia convictions against six people including a priest on Thursday after the spectacular collapse of a case that has put the French justice system in the dock.

The case first shocked France because of the brutality of the claims but later because of a series of mistakes which meant the accused spent long periods in detention even though they were innocent.

Justice Minister Pascal Clement took the unusual step of apologising for the handling of the case, which has put the judiciary under pressure to carry out sweeping reforms, and announced an inquiry into what he said was a "disaster".

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called it a "judicial mess" and promised compensation for those falsely accused.

"The state must compensate of course, compensation will be fast," he said on France 3 television.

Most of the six accused wept as the court announced the verdict and their lawyers shared long embraces. Each of the five men and one woman had made one simple statement to the court, declaring: "I am innocent, Your Honour."

Seven other people had already been acquitted after Myriam Badaoui admitted last year she had falsely accused the 13 of involvement in a paedophilia ring to shift some of the blame from herself.

The sentences handed down to her, her husband and another married couple stay in force in respect of the repeated rape of her four children and other acts at her home in northern France from 1995 until 2000, when social services sounded the alarm.

The oldest of the six in court on Thursday was a 67-year-old priest, Dominique Wiel, and the youngest was 24. Their sentences had ranged up to seven years in jail.

Twelve of the 13 originally accused spent between 16 and 39 months in detention and some lost their jobs. Others were barred from seeing their children and a 14th defendant, who said he was innocent, committed suicide while in prison.

"It was like being in a nightmare for four years, but it should never have happened," Wiel said.

"That makes five years that I have been waiting for this. Finally I can resume a normal life," said Thierry Dausque, 33, another of the six.

The defence observed a minute's silence for the defendant who committed suicide.

The failings in the case have prompted demands for changes in the justice system and put the government under pressure to explain why magistrates and psychologists believed the charges made by the woman and her children despite inconsistencies in their testimony.

Justice Minister Clement said President Jacques Chirac had ordered the inquiry and that magistrates involved could be sanctioned. A first report would be delivered in February.

Prosecuting attorney Yves Jannier said: "This case is a mish-mash of little errors, malfunctions and lapses of attention."

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Recovered Memory Murder Case Adjourned
Posted by News Editor
Friday, December 02, 2005

Recovered Memory Murder Case Adjourned

Regular readers might be interested in the case of Thomas Bowman who is appealing aganst his conviction of murder. Thomas was senteced to life imprisonment in 2002 in what has been described as the first ever conviction in the UK for murder on the basis of recovered memories.

For two-and-a-half years since his conviction, Bowman's sister, Mrs Westerman and her family, have been fighting to clear his name, and now remarkable new evidence has emerged that challenges every aspect of the case against Bowman.

An appeal at the High Court in London to overturn the murder conviction was told that evidence relied on to secure his conviction was 'wholly implausible' and the product of fantasies produced by the influence of 'recovered memory' self-help guides.

At the heart of this astonishing case is the controversial recovered memory syndrome, a condition which emerged first in America in the Eighties and has since destroyed hundreds of families in Britain, splitting parents and children in a welter of accusations and recriminations.

The syndrome is most often linked with suppressed memories of physical or sexual abuse suffered as a child and suddenly recalled as an adult during psychiatric therapy.

Furthermore seven eminent Home Office pathologists, including two instructed by the prosecution, have found that there was no conclusive evidence that Mary Bowman was strangled as suggested by the prosecution.

Relatively recently, in the course of preparing Mr Bowman's case for appeal, Cathy McGalie, of Chris Saltrese Solicitors, made a striking discovery. She learned that, because of lax procedures which prevailed during the 1970s, it was surprisingly common for samples which had been removed from one cadaver during autopsy to be interred, as a matter of covenience, with a different body. She therefore requested that the samples of neck tissue on which the prosecution case partly rested should be tested. When the prosecution belatedly revealed in court earlier this week that DNA tests indicated that the tissue was not Mrs Bowman's, the appeal court hearing was suddenly adjourned pending further investigations.

For further details of this disturbing case see a Fiona Barton's report in the Daily Mail and BBC news report