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It means you don’t have to pay any costs as your claim progresses, and if your claim loses you don’t have anything to pay – so long as you act honestly and follow our advice.
Literally, no win – no fee.
Your legal costs (DLP’s charges)
These are made up of:
The Defendant’s legal costs
These are made up of:
If your claim is unsuccessful, you do not have to pay DLP’s charges under a ‘no win no fee’ agreement.
If your claim is successful, then your legal costs (our charges) will have to be paid:
If your claim is successful the Defendant will contribute towards payment of your legal costs, but they won’t pay all your costs. So, we ask you to contribute towards the shortfall.
We are also entitled to charge a ‘success fee’ which reflects the risk that we don’t get paid at all if your case loses, and we must wait until the end of your claim to get paid. The Defendant doesn’t have to pay the success fee, so we take it from 30% of your compensation.
We cannot keep more than 30% of your compensation. So even if the unrecovered costs and success fee come to more than this, you are guaranteed to receive 70% of your compensation.
No, this deduction isn’t negotiable because:
If you are a minor or a patient you will receive 100% of your compensation
The Defendant will only make a contribution towards payment of your legal costs and they do not have to pay the success fee at all.
The Defendant will try to reduce the contribution they make towards your legal costs just as they will try to minimise the compensation that they pay. For instance, they may argue that some of the work we have done was unnecessary or that we have spent too much time on your case.
The Defendant is not obliged to pay all your legal costs. For instance, they don’t have to pay for us providing repeat advice about funding, prospects of success, or the value of your claim.
No, it doesn’t work like this because the Defendant is not responsible for how you have chosen to fund your claim.
The value of your compensation is assessed in accordance with strict rules, and it cannot be inflated to cover the contribution that you have to make towards your legal costs.
Very likely.
In most cases the value of unrecovered legal costs and the success fee will be more than 30% of your compensation. We write off any costs over 30% of your compensation so you do not have to pay them.
In rare cases if a claim is of high value it is possible that the unrecovered legal costs and the success fee will not exceed 30% of the compensation, in which case the client may receive more than 70% of their compensation. These cases are exceptional, and we do not guarantee that you will receive more than 70% of your compensation.
Yes, this is sometimes true because compensation and legal costs are calculated in different ways.
Legal costs are calculated by applying our hourly charges to the time spent working on your case. If a case is complicated and more time is spent working on it, or if it is defended so that it goes on for a long time, the legal costs will be higher.
Your legal costs also include any payments we make to third parties such as experts and barristers (disbursements). Disbursements will be higher if court proceedings are issued.
Your compensation is calculated according to the avoidable injury you have suffered, and any past and future financial losses you will incur because of negligent treatment.
Therefore the value of your case is not linked to the level of your legal costs.
Firms who fund personal injury cases under a ‘no win no fee’ agreement are allowed to charge a success fee if the case is successful. This fee is intended to compensate them for:
The success fee is 100% of our basic legal costs. If your claim settles without going into court proceedings the success fee may be less.
You pay the success fee out of your compensation.
There are rules that limit the amount of compensation that we can use to pay the success fee; it can only be taken from 25% of your compensation for general damages (pain and suffering) and past financial losses.
If the success fee is more this, then we waive the additional amount and you do not have to pay it.
This is because the deduction from your compensation is made up of 2 elements:
If your case is unsuccessful you don’t have to pay DLP’s charges (your own legal costs).
You don’t have to pay the Defendant’s legal costs provided you have acted honestly and in accordance with our advice.
Offers of settlement
The rules about offers of settlement are designed encourage acceptance of reasonable offers and to discourage people from going to Court.
If you fail to beat an offer made by the Defendant, or if you want to accept it a long time after it was made, you will receive some compensation but you will probably have to pay the Defendant’s costs from the date of the offer.
You won’t have to pay the Defendant any more than you receive in compensation and legal costs. In other words, you won’t be left with a big debt, but it might cancel out any compensation that you would have received.
To avoid this risk we assess all offers very carefully and if we think that you will not beat an offer made by the Defendant we will advise you to accept it.
1. We can end the CFA if you do not cooperate with us.
Examples of non-cooperation include:
If you don’t cooperate with us then we can’t conclude your case and we lose the opportunity to recover our legal costs from the Defendant. Therefore, if we and the CFA due to your non-cooperation you may have to pay our outstanding legal costs and disbursements.
2. We can end the CFA if we consider that your claim is no longer likely to succeed.
We will keep your case under review as it progresses. If your claim has difficulties, or new information comes to light that weakens your claim, we may decide that we cannot fund it further under a CFA.
If we terminate the CFA because we think your claim won’t succeed, we will not charge you for the work that we have done.
Yes, you can end the CFA within the 14 day cancellation period and you will not incur any costs.
If you end the CFA after the cancellation period and before the end of your claim then we are entitled to ask you to pay our legal costs. This is because we will not be able to conclude the case ourselves and recover payment from the Defendant.
DLP will exercise a ‘lien’ over your file – this means we can keep your file of papers until all our outstanding costs are paid.
We can’t tell you how much your claim is worth until our dental advisors have completed their review of your clinical records and identified what your claim is about and how strong it is.
If a claim has weaknesses the settlement value might be less to take into account the risk that some or all of the claim might fail if it goes to trial.
Even if a case is quite strong, we will probably have to compromise the value to settle it. The advantage of settlement is that you receive your compensation sooner and you avoid the risk of not getting any compensation at all.
Compensation is made up of 3 parts:
Compensation is intended to put you back into the position you would have been had you not received negligent treatment. Therefore, you can’t claim costs that you would have incurred anyway.
When we know what your claim is about, we will advise you what you can and can’t claim. In the meantime, we recommend that you keep the following:
Generally, it takes 1 – 3 years to conclude a dental negligence claim, and sometimes it can take longer.
This timescale varies and will be influenced by various things such as:
It is essential that you continue to attend for regular dental check-ups during your claim to show that you are maintaining your dental health. If you don’t attend for regular dental check-ups this might weaken your case or reduce it’s value. Defendants often argue that clients who do not maintain good oral hygiene and/or attend regularly for routine check-ups and care have contributed to their own losses.
If you have gum disease (periodontal disease) it is especially important that you attend the dentist regularly and undertake all recommended treatment.
You can have corrective treatment while your case is ongoing. It’s important you have treatment as advised by your dentist, especially if you are in pain or if delaying treatment would make things worse.
If your claim is in relation to restorations such as veneers, crowns, dental implants or bridgework that are still in your mouth, they can provide evidence in support of your claim. If you want to have these restorations removed and replaced, you should discuss with us whether we need to have you examined by an expert first. Certainly before you replace these restorations we need to make sure that your dentist has taken x-rays and photographs of them before they are removed and notes explaining why the corrective treatment was required.
If you need to have a tooth extracted, or any restorations removed we ask them to keep them in case they provide evidence to support your claim.
The General Dental Council (GDC) regulate dentists and deal with complaints of professional misconduct – they do not provide compensation.
You can make a complaint to the GDC at the same time as bringing a negligence claim, although sometimes the Defendant will try to delay dealing with the negligence claim until the GDC complaint has concluded.
We will obtain copies of all relevant dental and medical records and then we will ask our internal dental experts to review your records and decide whether your claim is strong enough to proceed.
If they consider your claim is reasonably strong your file will be allocated to a member of the legal team. They will complete the ‘Pre Action Protocol’ which involves:
If our dental experts consider your claim is not strong enough to proceed we will explain why and we will end the CFA. We will not charge you for the work we have done.
It is most common to bring your claim against the individual dentist(s) who have treated you.
We might advise you to bring your claim against the owners of the Practice, if:
No, we don’t recommend individual treating dentists. This is because we only have experience of individual dentists in their capacity as expert witnesses.
The GDC or NHS websites may offer information about dentists in your area.