Court Directions
The next stage will be that the Court gives directions for how your claim can be prepared for the Court to consider it in a trial. The Court will normally allocate your claim to one of three tracks:
1. The Small Claims Track – where the injury element of your claim is valued at less than £1,000.
2. Fast Track – where the injury claim is worth more than £1,000 but the overall claim is worth less than £25,000.
3. Multi-Track – all claims worth more than £25,000 (plus one or two other categories of claims).
The vast majority of cases are allocated to the Fast Track. Once this happens, the Court will provide a timetable to ensure speedy management of the claim through to trial (if that is eventually required). The normal stages are:
Disclosure of any relevant documents by both you and your opponent.
Medical Evidence – service/exchange of any updating medical evidence (the initial medical evidence will have been served when you registered the claim at the Court).
Witness Statements – these will need to be served/exchanged between you and your opponent.
At the end of the timetable, the Court will have provided us with a “Trial Window” (the trial could take place on any day within the window). This can be about six months after the end of the initial timetable set – although this will vary depending upon what needs to be done in your case to ready it for trial. It is possible for there to be other Court Hearings for the Court to assess what else needs to be done to prepare the case for trial. You will not normally have to attend any hearings before the trial. You will, of course, have to attend the trial!
