Tag: solicitors

Average personal injury awards did go up in 2014, not claims

For over a year now the Irish insurance industry has been spinning dramatic price hikes in car insurance as being the result of claims – those awful people injured in car accidents who dared to claim against insurance are the fault, along of course with their lawyers.

It is quite obvious that there are multiple factors at play in the car insurance market. New regulatory rules, bad investments, bad management and years of overly-aggressive competition are clearly the major factors now biting the industry. But it is far easier to blame lawyers, demonise claimants and pretend whiplash is an imaginary injury.

But two things have taken the wind out of the insurance industry spin: the Injuries Board using actual research and statistics to counter the allegations and the dramatic intervention of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

One spin in particular, though, will not die: the suggestion that there was a huge jump in court injury awards from 2013 – 2015. On RTÉ’s Nine News last night (5 October 2016, from 1:43) Kevin Thompson, CEO of Insurance Ireland, made the claim again:

We’ve also seen a 33% increase in the level of awards in the Circuit Court from 2013 – 2015.

This is amazing. Injury awards suddenly up by one third! But this claim, often made by insurance industry spokespeople, raises two obvious questions: (1) why did this happen in the Circuit Court?; and (2) what happened between 2013 and 2015?

The answer is simple. In 2013, the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2013 was introduced. It, among other things, raised the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, so that court could deal with some higher-value claims. So yes, average awards went up.

The District and Circuit Courts have upper limits on the compensation they can award and until 2014, when the law took effect, the maximum the Circuit Court could award was €38,092.14. That odd figure is £30,000 in old money, hinting that the limit had not been changed in a very long time. In fact, since the late 1990s many argued for an increase in jurisdiction for the District and Circuit Courts to address inflation and the changing nature of litigation. In 2010 I wrote that such a change was long overdue and would help to reduce legal costs. The government had introduced a law in 2002 to allow them to change jurisdiction limits but failed to do so, partly due to insurance industry lobbying.

Increasing the jurisdiction of the lower courts allows them to hear a range of cases that they are more than capable of dealing with, at a lower cost. So, increasing court jurisdiction limits should reduce legal costs.

The increase in Circuit Court jurisdiction in 2014 raised maximum personal injury awards by that court by €21,907.86 – around 57%. This is a significant increase and one which has an immediate impact on statistics, particularly average awards. There is no reason that a Circuit Court judge would award more than a High Court judge in a particular case, so there should be no award inflation. But the average Circuit Court injuries award will naturally increase. Likewise, at High Court level, the average award increases because the lower value awards up to €60,000 are taken out.

So, it is not at all surprising that there was an increase in Circuit Court compensation levels from 2013 to 2015 – the jurisdiction level increased 57% but the average award only 33%. Average award levels limited to one court jurisdiction are of little use in considering the overall levels of compensation awarded or general claims activity.

What the insurance industry does not say, and cannot say, is that this 33% was a result of overall compensation inflation.

Insurer spin on compensation working, despite evidence

"Claim? But what about our international reputation!" — “Claim? But what about our international reputation!”

The insurance industry is taking advantage of the current interregnum to step up its media campaign against paying compensation to injured parties. This is a concerted campaign with almost daily media reports of the damage allegedly high compensation levels and legal costs are doing to the insurance industry, the economy and even Ireland’s foreign direct investment. It appears to be working, despite all evidence suggesting that other factors are causing premiums to increase.

Today is the turn of the Small Firms Association, who claim that compensation “culture” is now “out of control”. According to the SFA:

Since 2011 insurance costs have risen by 30 per cent, the association said, with a large part of the jump occurring within the past 12 months.

What you won’t find anywhere, however, is evidence to suggest that this huge hike in premiums has been caused by compensation, or how “compensation culture” is “out of control”. On the contrary, all indications are that the main reasons for insurance increases have nothing to do with compensation. Industry spin is having the desired effect, however, with even Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation appearing recently to come around to the industry point of view.

I recently requested documents from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on representations by the insurance industry and in the documents released were records relating to two industry meetings where the Minister was lobbied on insurance costs.

The first meeting was with executives from Axa and was requested through Fine Gael Councillor Anthony Lavin, who is also a customer care manager with Axa. It took place on 8 October 2015. A further meeting took place with Insurance Ireland, the industry body, and was arranged through PR consultants.

The Minister’s briefing materials included a National Competitiveness Council report on insurance costs. Recent newspaper articles have referred to this report and its reference to legal costs supposedly being “sticky”, but generally do not point out other important aspects of the report.

The industry frequently says motor claim awards are too high but “64% of PIAB [Injuires Board] awards for motor injury claims are for <€20,000 … the cost of processing a claim through the PIAB is at historically low levels”.
The review of the book of quantum “could result in higher costs, and ultimately higher premiums.”
Legal costs “proved extremely sticky” apart from “a brief period in 2013”. The evidence for these comments is not referred to.

Minutes of the meeting record that the Minister made a number of counter arguments to Axa on compensation concerns, for example that medical negligence cases skewed comparisons of compensation payments and that the level of awards by PIAB was “fairly consistent” from 2010-2014, with the majority of awards being under €20,000. He said it would be helpful if the industry provided more information on “untracked cases”. These are mostly cases that are settled between claimants and insurers with the result that the State agencies do not learn what the outcome is.

View this document on Scribd

Given that Axa and the industry are seeking a number of reforms that would require them to be given more statistical information by PIAB and the Courts Service, it is peculiar that the industry continues to be remarkably reticent on providing details on untracked cases. The note of this meeting states that Axa agreed to “work with Insurance Ireland with a view to supplying” this type of data.

Axa appeared to focus on what were effectively four case studies of recent court cases where the awards exceeded what the insurers had valued the cases at. Axa were not, in fact, the insurer in any of these cases. A limited number of court awards are not, of course, representative of most claims and indeed the note of the meeting between the Minister and Insurance Ireland on 6 November 2015 stats that about 20% of claims go to PIAB, of which about 40% are rejected and settled and “[a] small number of cases are finalised by the Courts.”

View this document on Scribd

Axa, along with many other parties, has made submissions to DJEI on the operation and implementation of the PIAB legislation, which has been ongoing for some time. A significant suggestion is that the limitation period for personal injury claims be reduced to one year (at the moment the limitation period is two years). This proposal was already considered when the legislation was introduce to establish PIAB and the government decided against a one year limitation period.

It was felt at the time that such a short limitation period would exclude many valid claims or that it would drive people into dealing with lawyers and claims at a time when they might still be receiving treatment or in recovery. A one year limitation period would be extraordinarily restrictive, its only aim and affect being to reduce the liabilities of insurance companies by excluding valid, genuine claims.

View this document on Scribd

A further surprising proposal is to allow PIAB to award “some form of Legal fees to lawyers that will allow for a higher acceptance rate of awards.” The insurance industry’s objective in having PIAB established was to drive a wedge between injured parties and solicitors, who might provide claimants with independent, expert advice. This was to be achieved by the law providing that no legal fees would be awarded by PIAB (except in limited situations, and even then in very small amounts). The industry repeatedly claims that, despite PIAB being intended to be a “lawyer free zone”, over 90% of claimants are represented by solicitors (again no evidence is publicly available to support this claim). Axa’s proposal appears to accept that the right of people to seek professional representation is still exercised in most cases, despite the cost implication at present.

The above documents and some others are available here on Scribd. They suggest that government departments and the National Competitive Council do not necessarily share the views of the industry and are aware of other factors affecting the insurance industry.

However, since the Minister’s meetings with the industry late last year, during which he did not appear to accept what was being said on compensation and PIAB at face value, he has since sought “judicial buy-in” for the as-yet incomplete revisions to the book of quantum and makes the same points on insurance costs put forward by industry representatives.

The bulk of media reporting and commentary on insurance premium hikes remains focused on and obsessed with compensation, with little being said or asked about Solvency II, RSA, FBD and other industry-specific issues.

Insurers still spinning against the facts on personal injury claims

swear-to-spin-the-truth_resize Rarely a week goes by without more insurance industry spin on personal injury claims, particularly whiplash claims. The industry now takes any opportunity to blame personal injury claims for their woes, even in the face of facts which indicate other causes.

Inevitably, the Irish insurance industry is seeking reforms similar to those announced late last year in the UK, including a ban on claims for “minor” whiplash injuries.

AIG, a massive multinational insurer that was in recent years more often in the news for needing an initial $85 billion bailout from the American government, wants a ban to be considered here. Their general manager for Ireland, Declan O’Rourke, told the Irish Times:

Ireland should follow the UK’s lead in considering a ban on whiplash, to flush out fraudulent claims. The UK is considering a position whereby whiplash victims would have their medical expenses and loss of earnings compensated by insurers in a move that it believes could save the sector £1 billion a year and reduce premium costs.

Mr O’Rourke does not go into detail about why a whole category of claim should be banned to weed out the supposed problem of fraudulent claims, but the insurance industry often suggests that all whiplash claims are effectively fraudulent. This is in spite of long-standing medical evidence and opinion. A call for a ban on whiplash claim won’t go far in Ireland, where it would likely be unconstitutional, but other reforms will be demanded. Indeed, it appears AIG has a wishlist of things it would like an Irish government to do, quite a turn-around for a company that had to go cap in hand to the Federal Reserve in 2008 to avoid oblivion. More recently, its Irish operations benefitted from assistance from the Irish taxpayer. One might be inclined to wonder whether any losses or difficulties at AIG could have causes beyond the cost of claims.

Yesterday, Fiona Muldoon of FBD was a guest on Morning Ireland, taking another opportunity to bemoan the cost of claims and the legal system despite FBD’s results telling a different story. FBD has quite reasonably been described as “beleaguered” and has suffered from a range of difficulties which have nothing to do with personal injury claims.

The Times (Ireland edition) covered FBD’s latest results with the headline “Insurance sector too competitive, FBD says” [paywalled]. While the real problem for the industry is in the headline, the article nevertheless begins:

Over-inflated whiplash claims and too much competition between insurers were among the many factors to blame for FBD’s loss-making performance this year, its chief executive said.

The cost of allegedly “over-inflated” whiplash claims is a crutch that the industry repeatedly leans on when in difficulty, while the truth for FBD is that:

Most of last year’s losses stemmed from measures to bolster its capital reserves and €11 million in restructuring costs.

The article also points out that FBD experienced a 9% fall in premium volumes last year – ie. they lost customers. Ms Muldoon continues:

A number of factors had made the Irish insurance sector unprofitable between 2012 and 2014, including too much competition driving down premiums, Ms Muldoon said. “The market in Ireland is very fractured, which meant that companies were competing aggressively against each other and in hindsight they were not charging enough.”

So. Insurance companies have had financial difficulties because they have had to bolster reserves, lost customers and have not charged enough for years. But ask any spokesperson for the insurers about their problems and it’s not long before the cost of claims is front and centre.

This is a remarkable feature of articles on the insurance industry in Ireland over the past year: reports on financial results cover these internal difficulties and challenges faced by the industry which are obviously having a negative impact on premiums. Figures are available to explain the impact on insurers but not, it seems, to explain their complaints about the cost of claims and the legal system.

The reality is that the industry does not have any statistics or figures about personal injury claims that it is willing to make public. Even the Injuries Board, effectively a creature of the industry, has criticised the failure to support allegations about claims, as well as their failure to explain where there premium income is going. The number of personal injury court claims fell in 2014 and the Injuries Board has highlighted that there is a €1 billion difference between the premium income of Irish insurers and published awards.

It’s time for insurers to accept that, this time around, their losses are down to themselves and not due to paying out on claims (which is, of course, what they exist to do).

Is the Law Society trying to regulate blogs?

Restrictive rules on advertising by solicitors contain important exemptions to protect the right of solicitors to comment on legal and other issues. Is the Law Society interpreting the rules in a way would restrict those exemptions and increase their oversight of comment by solicitors?

Advertising by solicitors is very tightly restricted by the law and regulated by the Law Society of Ireland. I have written about some of the restrictions before. Most of the rules regulate the tone of advertising; what might be termed “ambulance chasing” through advertising, for example, is not possible in Ireland. None of the UK-style personal injury ads you might see on daytime television are possible in Ireland. Even this, quite mild and professional, form of ad would most likely result in trouble for an Irish solicitor daring to upload it.

The Irish rules may or may not be a good way to regulate advertising by lawyers. They do, at the very least, clash with the demand that the professions be more competitive. But the rules do recognise a very important exemption: comment. Exemptions are included in the Solicitors Advertising Regulations that should ensure no overreach in their application that would regulate or prohibit genuine comment.

The Regulations only apply to an “advertisement”, defined as being almost any type of communication “which is intended to publicise or otherwise promote a solicitor in relation to the solicitor’s practice” but “excluding a communication which is primarily intended to give information on the law”. So, a communication must be both intended to promote a solicitor and not be primarily intended to give information on the law for the Regulations to apply.

This is quite a large exemption and obviously seeks to make a distinction between traditional advertising and, for example, news updates or comment. If a communication by a solicitor is primarily intended to give information on the law it is not an advertisement, is not governed by the extensive rules and restrictions contained in the Regulations and, importantly, is not subject to oversight by the Law Society. That oversight is significant: a breach of the Regulations is a disciplinary matter which can potentially have serious consequences for the solicitor involved.

One catch-all provision in the Regulations, for example, prohibits an advertisement which is likely to bring the solicitors’ profession into disrepute. It is quite difficult to know precisely what is covered by that prohibition (the Law Society does not publish decisions made under the Regulations) but it is quite easy to envisage an individual or organisation who dislikes a communication from someone who happens to be a solicitor making a complaint to the Society under this heading of the Regulations.

Last Friday the Law Society published a surprising practice note on advertising. The headine refers to legal advice columns, so you might think it applies only to regular pieces in local papers where readers send in questions, for example. It suggests that where the solicitor is paying to have the column appear or is simply reproducing the content, the exemption does not apply and the column might be an advertisement. This is fair enough: such a column should be identified as advertorial or a commercial feature by the publisher. In fact, paying for editorial content to appear in a newspaper without making it clear to readers that it is a paid feature is a criminal offence for all businesses, not just solicitors.

However, the practice note makes a number of significant leaps when interpreting the Regulations. It refers to an exemption “set down in regulation 12” and refers to the contents of regulation 12 as being a test. In fact, the exemption is contained in the definition of “advertisement” in regulation 2(a). Regulation 12(a) adds to or gives examples of the exemption, it does not limit it. Paragraphs (b) and (c) do limit the exemption by clarifying that the distribution of free legal books may, for example, constitute advertising even though the publication might be information on the law.

The danger in this practice note, which one must assume the Law Society will apply in interpreting the Regulations, is that it sets a far more restrictive scope to the comment exemption in the Regulations. The paid advice column is not a difficulty, but many solicitors now publish blogs, for example, and some pay to do so. Many solicitors have websites which may constitute advertising in their entirety or may include information on the law but either way are likely to be paid for by the solicitor.

Where an article does not satisfy this test, that is, if it has been paid for by or on behalf of the solicitor, or where it has enjoyed repeated publication, the article is subject to the regulations in the normal way.

I do not accept this. Rather, the article might be subject to the Regulations. This blog is published using WordPress.com who I pay for mapping a domain name to it. Is it a series of legal articles written by me where part of the space in which it is published is paid for by me? Possibly, depending on your view of domain name mapping to a free blogging platform and whether the former constitutes “space” in which the blog is published. Is it an advertisement? Certainly not. It is not intended to be and it constitutes information on the law.

Regulation 12 is not a “test” of whether or not a communication by a solicitor is commercial or non-commercial. The test is in the definition of “advertisement” itself. The practice note is, perhaps inadvertently, further evidence of how the the Regulations are out of date. These anachronistic advertising rules do not appropriately accommodate or regulate blogging, social media or other contemporary means of communication.

The Regulations are already the subject of infringement proceedings by the European Commission who allege that they breach the Services Directive, which required that Member States ease restrictions on advertising by professionals. Despite this, the Law Society has recently been publishing practice notes which reinforce the existing Regulations and present to solicitors an interpretation of them more restrictive than the Regulations themselves. Complete reform of the the Regulations is long overdue.

New site for the day job

You might be interested in visiting the new site of the firm I work in – PG McMahon Solicitors. The site includes a blog (under the Updates heading) which will have more of a legal updates focus than the comment one of this blog. Check it out, and consider liking our Facebook page and following our Twitter account to keep up to date with posts.

Plain packaging, conflicts of interest and the Law Society

The controversy over plain packaging rumbles on and the campaign by the tobacco industry against new packaging laws has stepped up a gear now that the English Government has edged closer to introducing a law like the one proposed by the Irish Government. The industry has always threatened to challenge these laws and it appears likely they will. The last Minister for Health was adamant that the law be introduced. I do not know the attitude of Leo Varadkar, the new Minister for Health, to the Bill.

My specific interest, which I wrote about before, was the involvement of solicitors in opposing the proposed law. The law would, according to the Law Society, be an attack on intellectual property and would damage our international reputation. Both are questionable arguments but the Law Society is not alone in having these views: it is joined by the major tobacco companies, who made submissions to the Oireachtas in almost identical terms.

(As a sidenote, it is striking that most members of the profession who were happy to rubbish concerns raised about the submissions made by the Law Society to the Oireachtas were also very quick to acknowledge their lack of expertise in intellectual property law. I did not notice many intellectual property law practitioners publicly defending the submissions.)

While I am of the opinion that the plain packaging issue is not one of any significant importance to the legal profession or the Law Society, my main concern is that the submission document disclosed no relevant interests on the part of the Law Society Intellectual Property Law Committee that drafted them. In fact, it didn’t name the authors or the Committee members.

I had a number of communications with the President of the Law Society about the issue and he ultimately wrote to me, characterising my comments as amounting to a view that a member of the IP committee of the Law Society had engaged in “highly improper conduct of acting in a conflict of interest situation”. I made no such allegation.

On a preliminary, technical, note: the committee members were not, to my knowledge, “acting” for anyone when they were formulating their submissions. A solicitor’s involvement with a Law Society committee is an unpaid role and is not carried out on behalf of specific clients. It is a means by which the solicitor with expert knowledge shares that knowledge to benefit the Society and others.

My view is that where the Law Society and its committees engage in lobbying relevant interests should be disclosed, as should be the case when anyone engages in lobbying. In this particular instance, I would expect that a submission by the IP Committee would disclose in the document itself who its members are and what members act for tobacco companies, the Health Service Executive, the Irish Cancer Society or any other interested party.

Expecting the disclosure of interests is not a revolutionary idea: it should be the bare minimum standard the Law Society holds itself to.

By interpreting my concerns as he did, the President decided that he was of the view that I was, in fact, making “a serious complaint about the conduct of a solicitor.” Not correct: I was making a complaint about the apparent lack of procedures in Law Society committees when lobbying on proposed legislation. Plain packaging was a current example but the issue is much larger.

But by deciding that my concerns were a misconduct complaint the President could then conclude that it would be improper for him to become involved and instead deflect my comments to the Registrar of Solicitors. The President was telling me to make a regulatory complaint against another solicitor. I had no intention of doing so and I had not alleged a breach of conduct, the Solicitors Acts or anything of that nature.

The situation therefore appears to be that the Law Society, as an organisation of its members, is not willing to consider observations from those members about conflicts of interest policies for committees. Instead, issues which arise should be raised as misconduct complaints (which are, obviously, very serious). It is a bizarre attitude to take which muddies the waters between two separate spheres of the profession: client work and the activities of a representative professional organisation.

The Law Society has countered criticism of the plain packaging debacle by insisting that it is not a “front” for the tobacco industry. The President wrote that such ideas were “conspiracy theories” which were “without foundation”. I had not, however, suggested a conspiracy of tobacco companies and their solicitors. That is not the issue: basic principles of transparency are what members of the Society, and the wider public affected by its actions, should require.

Solicitors represent the interests of their clients, whatever the activities of their clients may be. That is their job. But it is difficult to see why solicitors advocating a particular view on the law, under the banner of the entire profession, cannot include a footnote to disclose whether or not they might act for people or organisations with a direct interest in the outcome. Should the Society not hold itself to that standard?

Objections to the proposed Irish tobacco plain packaging law: an overview

Ireland is obliged by international law to reduce smoking. In the last decade we took the initiative by restricting advertising and sponsorship and introducing a workplace ban. Current Government policy goes much further: a tobacco free Ireland in 11 years. The next step toward that goal is to remove branding from tobacco products, just as the Australians did two years ago. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children is considering a law that would make all cigarette packets look the same, containing government notices alone.

The tobacco industry lobbied ferociously against the Australian plain packaging law, but it was passed. They sued the Australian government and lost. They are funding tobacco-producing nations in taking a case to the World Trade Organisation alleging that Australia has breached international law. But intellectual property and trade laws don’t trump health protection. The Australian High Court said that intellectual property is designed to serve public policy as well as private interests. Australia implemented its law to fulfil its commitments under the World Health Organisation convention on tobacco control (FCTC). Ireland has also signed and ratified the FCTC, and while the convention doesn’t strictly require plain packaging laws the WHO encourages them. The Minister for Health’s policy of a tobacco free Ireland by 2025 was announced as an FCTC implementation measure.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee sought submissions on plain packaging and recently held hearings. Unsurprisingly, it received opposition from the tobacco industry. The industry made four core points:

there is no evidence that the law will reduce smoking;
it would breach national and international law;
it would lead to an increase in counterfeiting and
it will damage Ireland’s reputation for protecting intellectual property.

The Law Society made submissions, drafted by its intellectual property committee, which made the very same four core points as the industry, in almost identical terms. They gave no alternative view or guidance on the existence or strength of arguments that could be made against the claims of the industry.

The tobacco industry and the Law Society, of course, have a point: these laws fundamentally restrict intellectual property rights. But intellectual property rights are negative: they allow you to stop others using similar names. They do not, in themselves, give you the right to use them. Trade mark law allows authorities to refuse the registration of a trade mark if the mark is contrary to public policy.

Drug companies cannot advertise directly to consumers in Ireland. Pharmacists are required to suggest generic alternatives to branded products. These regulatory measures challenge the intellectual property rights of drug companies, who also happen to be significant foreign direct investors in Ireland. But the tobacco industry and the Law Society are not equally concerned about the effects of those laws on “Ireland Inc”. They are more interested in trying to gain support from the food industry. The Director General, Ken Murphy, worries that the next target will be Kerrygold. This ignores the obvious point that consumer foodstuffs are not, by their nature, harmful to public health when consumed as intended. This is not the case with tobacco.

All anti-smoking measures introduced over the past two decades restrict and interfere with the tobacco industry’s interests. Most also limit intellectual property rights, particularly their trade marks. “Marlboro Lights” is a registered Irish trade mark, but it can no longer be used because it suggests one product is less harmful than another. Most would consider such a restriction to be reasonable and justifiable.

The tobacco industry and the Law Society argue that plain packaging laws breach international law, in particular the TRIPS and Paris Conventions. This is not a novel legal debate: the Australians have already been down this road and there are copious academic texts and commentaries on the argument. Respected intellectual property academics like Professors Mark Davison and Matthew Rimmer argue the role of international law may be quite limited. They point to the fact that international law does not give the tobacco industry a right to use their intellectual property. It follows that if a government restricts or prohibits the use of branding, it is not attacking a protected right of the industry.

But the Law Society told the Oireachtas none of this.

The spectre of unconstitutionality was even raised by by the tobacco industry and the Law Society, but they give little detail of this argument and reason by analogy to electricity pylons and planning permission. A highly respected member of the Law Society’s own committee that drafted the submissions doesn’t agree – but this view was not put before the Oireachtas.

The tobacco industry and the Law Society all but ignore the public health motivations of plain packaging and fall back on the weak assertion that there is no evidence to justify it. This is, at best, debateable and, at worst, circular. Evidence that the law will work can only be obtained after introduction. Furthermore, the Australian law was based on significant research and was supported by leading health experts. After the law was introduced calls to smoking quitlines soared and the rate of smoking declined. Even supporters caution that it is too soon to know if the law caused that reduction, but the indications are positive.

The tobacco industry and the Law Society are also concerned about counterfeiting because, they say, plain packs will be easier to copy. The argument is nonsense and when the Gardaí and Revenue Commissioners told the Oireachtas that they did not expect an increased workload as a result of a plain packaging law, the Law Society dropped the claim. The argument is also contradictory and the tobacco industry has long maintained that all paper-based packaging is easy to counterfeit. In fact, the most difficult element of packaging to copy is the Revenue stamp, which will still appear on plain packs. As Cancer Research UK point out “The reality is that all packs are easy to counterfeit and that plain packaging will not make any difference.”

Australia is the only country to have introduced plain packaging and it has done so very recently. Firm evidence of the success of the law is not yet available but the signs are positive. There are very convincing arguments against legal objections to such a law, but the Law Society failed to bring them to the attention of the Oireachtas.

Time to end willful ignorance on tobacco packaging and lobbying

Controversy over the submissions of the Law Society on proposed plain packaging law for tobacco products continues.

It seemed, initially, that the Law Society was going to take the concerns raised by myself and a number of colleagues seriously. I was told that certain things would be looked into and a proposal was going before the Council of the Law Society in relation to lobbying. But we were also referred to as a “vested interest” (!) by the President of the Law Society who subsequently dismissed our views as “conspiracy theories” and has effectively refused to look into the issue any further.

A member of the Council of the Law Society has written an article which is distinctly dismissive of our concerns, despite the following admission:

it’s important to note that what this column knows about IP law could be written on the back of a plain cigarette packet with room for several “SMOKING KILLS” reminders, so we are not taking sides here

When they appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health & Children, the President and Director General were also at paints to point out that IP was not an area they specialised in. The problem with the submissions is that if they are examined with any reference to people who do have knowledge of IP law it is plainly obvious that the submissions do take sides.

So it is useful to add to the debate a contribution from Dr Matthew Rimmer, a leading Australian IP academic, which has been published here.

In its efforts to thwart the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco products in Ireland, Big Tobacco and its allies like the Law Society of Ireland have marshalled a number of arguments, similar to those which decisively rejected in Australia. It is disappointing that the Law Society of Ireland has been promulgating a number of myths promoted by Big Tobacco. It should better than to uncritically adopt the rhetoric and the talking points of the tobacco industry … Rather than listen to Big Tobacco’s phony arguments about trade and intellectual property, Ireland should introduce the plain packaging of tobacco products to protect the common good and the public health of its people.

Stop the madness

The Sunday Independent reported yesterday on the infamous “Kilkenny trust” that supposedly allows you to scrub a property free of bank debt, as if by magic. It was reported earlier in the Summer that certain business people, including Bill Cullen, were using the mechanism.

Given the privacy of the operation it is difficult to ascertain from news reports what has been going on but, helpfully, Karl Deeter attended a presentation about the scheme and has blogged about it here. I am not a trust specialist but, in my professional opinion, it looks mad.

I had a few questions of my own reading the post:

Why are they recruiting people to enter into the trust? Usually, legal and accounting mechanisms are put in place by a combination of accountants and solicitors to help their clients achieve a certain goal. It is unusual for non-professionals to go about recruiting people to join a scheme like this and, as Karl points out, the don’t seem to have professional indemnity insurance to protect clients when things go wrong. However, I note that they charge a fee themselves.
They get you to set up “a private trust in private”. What does the second use of the word private achieve?
What is meant by getting a notary to create a “Court of Record”? I’ll tell you: nothing. It makes no sense. A court of record is a court, and notaries don’t “create” courts. In fact, the only notaries in Ireland are notaries public who are only involved in transactions with an international dimension. There is no international dimension to these transactions so a notary should not be involved. The most an Irish notary public might do is verify some document or signature but, again, a notary public only does this for use abroad and a solicitor or commissioner for oaths would suffice.
They say that only your folio number goes into the trust. This makes no sense. A folio number is a record number for registered property and has no life or value apart from the property. You couldn’t sell or rent your folio number separately from the property, so how could you transfer it into a trust on its own?

Most of the rest of what they say involves banking and mortgages and Karl has pointed out that it doesn’t add up. I’m sure other solicitors and barristers would notice flaws in the proposal by reading his post (comments welcome here too). Karl reaches the sad but unavoidable conclusion:

This has all of the hallmarks of something that is either ‘too good to be true’ or perhaps ill thought out and where the absence of a challenge to date is being taken as evidence that ‘it works’ which is not how the legal system operates. The moving of an asset to a trust doesn’t mean a legal charge suddenly doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean that there was never a lien or a contract between two parties, if using trusts to stop creditors was that simple we probably would have heard of it before now.

Of the people at the meeting none of them seemed highly literate financially, several disclosed that they were borrowers of sub-prime lenders and the common thread was that they were all vulnerable and perhaps willing to believe something too easily, because I have learned from experience that when a person is drowning that even if you throw them a rock and say it will float that they are willing to give it a try.

Good news on anonymity in domestic violence cases

Domestic violence victims can seek a range of orders under the Domestic Violence Act 1996 which, it is hoped, give additional protection from violence. Like all family law cases in Ireland, domestic violence applications are held in camera and the public is excluded from the courtroom. However, if a domestic violence order is breached, a criminal prosecution is brought and held in public. Anyone can attend the hearing and the media can report on it. After years of this unacceptable position being tolerated, it appears that situation will change.

I can find no policy justification for the existing law and it appears to be a loophole: no-one thought to say, by the way, if an order is breached the prosecution should take place in camera. Because of the risk of publicity, it is unsurprising that victims of domestic violence often do not wish to appear as a witness for the prosecution. In a worst case scenario, the very mention of potential media publicity can discourage a victim from even seeking an order in the first place.

It is entirely unsatisfactory for victims of domestic violence to be put in the position where they will not participate in a prosecution or report a breach due to fear of adverse publicity. Publicity does not only affect the victim but also children, who are often involved in episodes of domestic violence. Even if they are not involved the victim is likely to be conscious that the children may be old enough to learn of case reports in the local paper. Victims, rightly or wrongly, may still wish to protect an abuser’s reputation for the good of the wider family and the publicity involved in prosecutions will discourage them from reporting a breach or appearing as a witness.

Despite the fact that newspapers can report breach prosecutions, reports rarely appear. I don’t have statistics on prosecutions, but they seem to result from only a small fraction of the number of domestic violence orders granted. It is hard to avoid concluding that the risk of publicity is a factor. I recently reviewed the available statistics on domestic violence orders since 2001 and was struck by the following:

from 2001 to 2010 there was a decrease of approx 24% in numbers applying for orders under the 1996 Act;
the greatest reduction in applications was for barring and interim barring orders, down approx 39% and 54% respectively.

The 2011 annual report of the Courts Service shows an increase in applications for domestic violence orders in that year as compared with 2010 but the overall trend over the past 10 years has been downward. There may be many reasons for the dramatic decline in applications under the 1996 Act but the reluctance to prosecute breaches must be having a knock-on effect on the willingness of victims to go to court for an order in the first place.

In August, I wrote to the Minister for Justice asking if this loophole would be closed. Today I received a reply: it will.

[The 2010-2014 National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence National Strategy] addresses the improvement of legislative provisions to protect victims of domestic violence. Among the proposed improvements is an amendment to s.17 of the Domestic Violence Act 1996 to provide for the anonymity of parties to proceedings for breaches of orders made under the Act. The proposed amendment is expected to be included in a Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which is presently with the Attorney General’s Office.

The National Strategy mentioned improvements to domestic violence legislation, as did the Fine Gael manifesto and the Programme for Government, but neither explicitly refer to closing the publicity loophole.

It is good news that the Government is now doing so.