A firm has lost a bid to dismiss a negligence claim brought by a former client who alleges it acted negligently in a personal injury case 12 years ago.

Lee Witcomb is suing Merseyside firm J Keith Park Solicitors over advice he received following a road collision as a 17-year-old motorcyclist. Witcomb says he did not receive any advice on provisional damages before agreeing to a £150,000 full and final settlement for leg injuries. Six years after the accident, he was advised he needed a below-knee amputation of his right leg. 

Witcomb contacted J Keith Park and asked if the claim could be reopened as amputation ‘was not factored in the original claim’. He was told he could not, but issued proceedings in 2019, a decade after the settlement meeting.

Witcomb was granted permission to pursue his claim by Mr Justice Bourne who said the limitation period began when he realised the extent of his injuries in 2017 and not when his personal injury case was settled in 2009. J Keith Park Solicitors appealed the decision.

Ruling in the Court of Appeal, Lady Justice Thirlwall said: ‘As the judge found, the claimant was advised that “the only option was a full and final settlement with no protection against future significant deterioration”.’

Dismissing the appeal, Thirlwall said: ‘There was no reason in 2016, any more than there was in 2009, for [Witcomb] to think that he might have been wrongly advised by his lawyers about the nature of the settlement. There was nothing intrinsic to his situation to alert him to the fact that he had received flawed advice. He believed, as a result of what he had been told, that only a lump sum in full and final settlement was possible.’

It is understood that Witcomb, who instructed Fieldfisher and was represented by Jeremy Hyam KC and John-Paul Swoboda, will now progress his claim to a trial on liability and quantum.

 

This article is now closed for comment.