19 June 2015 Edition 99 BC DISEASE NEWS A WEEKLY DISEASE UPDATE

Transcription

1 19 June 2015 Edition 99 BC DISEASE NEWS A WEEKLY DISEASE UPDATE

2 CONTENTS PAGE 2 Welcome PAGE 3 Just 4% of CMC complaints Concern Personal Injury, Reveals Legal Ombudsman New Mesothelioma Bill Enters Parliament Just One Solicitor Sent to SDT Over Referral Fee Ban MedCo Anti-Competition Issues as Judicial Review Goes Forward PAGE 4 Claim Portal Drop Out Cases Head for Court of Appeal Updated Claims Portal MI PAGE 5 Payments on Account of Costs Can be Paid in CFA Cases, Says High Court Welcome Welcome to this week s edition of BC Disease News. In the last week it has emerged that Claims Portal drop out cases are to be considered by the Court of Appeal. Elsewhere a new mesothelioma bill has entered Parliament. This week we present a feature exploring a report published by the ABI on Tuesday concerning issues with NIHL litigation. We consider the issues identified and proposed remedial reforms. In next week s edition we provide a full review of the report and why we believe the proposed reforms may fail in their intended aims. Finally, to commemorate next week s 100 th edition of Disease News, we have again devised an online quiz based on previous editions of BCDN. Top prize for the winner of the quiz is a two-day mini break to Rome for two people. Details can be found in What s New? at the end of this edition. Responses must be received by Thursday 25 th June and the winners will be announced in the 100 th edition. Any comments or feedback can be sent to Boris Cetnik or Charlotte Owen. As always, warmest regards to all. SUBJECTS Legal Ombudsman Reports Limited Personal Injury CMC Complaints New Mesothelioma Bill Only One SDT Over Referral Fee Ban MedCo Competition Issues and Judicial Review Court of Appeal to Consider Claims Portal Drop Out Cases Payments on Account of Costs in CFA Cases XYZ v Various [2015] EWHC 1151 (QB) ABI Report on Reforming NIHL Claims Feature: Muting NIHL Claims The ABI s Approach to Reform PAGE 2

3 Just 4% of CMC Complaints Concern Personal Injury, Reveals Legal Ombudsman Only 4% of complaints about claims management companies (CMCs) received by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) relate to personal injury work, it has been revealed. 1 The LeO took over the role of complaints handling for the sector in January, as we reported at the time. Formerly, the Claims Management Regulation Unit, based at the Ministry of Justice was responsible. Ombudsman Andrew Burford said yesterday that the LeO received just 253 complaints in its first three months in the new role, far fewer than had been expected. During the period from 28 January 2015 to the end of April, he said that 94% of complaints related to financial products, with just 4% relating to personal injury. The remainder related to other areas of law, particularly employment. Burford said: It s important to remember that we re not here to be a consumer champion or to fight for the industry We re an independent complaints service. We re not here to catch out CMCs, we re here to help CMCs improve and we can only do that in partnership with them. PAGE 3 New Mesothelioma Bill Enters Parliament A Bill aiming to reform the Mesothelioma Act 2014 has returned to Parliament in this session, having previously been taken no further forward in earlier sessions. The Mesothelioma (Amendment) Bill [HL] , which is being sponsored by Lord Alton of Liverpool, aims to amend the 2014 Act so that a portion of the levy imposed on insurers to fund the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payments Scheme is directed exclusively to research on mesothelioma. The Bill seeks to ring-fence no more than 1% of the total fund for research purposes. The Bill is drafted in the same terms as bills introduced by Lord Alton in previous sessions of Parliament. It had its first reading in the House of Lords on 2 June. A date for its second reading general debate on the Bill has not yet been scheduled. The Bill can be read here. BC Disease news will update on the progress of the Bill. Just One Solicitor Sent to SDT Over Referral Fee Ban It has emerged that just one solicitor has been sent to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) for breaching the ban on referral fees in personal injury cases. 2 Crispin Passmore, executive director at the Solicitors Regulations Authority (SRA), said the number of reports to the Authority about potential breaches had been in steady decline since the ban was introduced on 1 April He said the SRA received 154 reports from April 2013 to April 2015, only one of which resulted in a referral to the SDT. Mr Passmore, speaking at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum last week, said: Quite a lot of the reports come from other people in the market Businesses should be designed around customers, not regulation. Where changes are made so a business does not fall foul of the referral fee ban, there can sometimes be other issues. He added that the SRA answered 187 written requests for advice on the ban in 2013 and 80 in 2014, which he said was reasonably insignificant in amount and a quite positive sign of compliance. Some of the questions, he said, were whether the ban could be avoided by setting up an alternative business structure (ABS) of whether a fee was prohibited if it was paid by someone else. Finally, he said he hoped there would be fewer attempts to try and game the new ban on direct financial links between solicitors and medical reporting agencies, which the recently implemented MedCo portal seeks to prevent. MedCo Anti- Competition Issues as Judicial Review Goes Forward The medical reporting organisation (MRO) Speed Medical has issued a notice to renew its application at an oral hearing for judicial review of the whiplash MedCo scheme on the basis that only including one tier 1 provider in the list is anti-competitive. 3 As we have previously reported, since 6 April a claimant seeking to bring a lowvalue whiplash claim following a road traffic accident is required to instruct a medical expert from a shortlist generated randomly by the MedCo portal. This list is made up of either one high-volume national MRO (a tier 1 provider) and six other (tier 2) providers, or seven individual medical experts.

4 The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has since told MedCo to crack down on the large tier 1 medical reporting organisations (MROs) that have created multiple tier 2 agencies to increase their chances of receiving instructions. Speed Medical, Doctors Chambers and, now, Premex have all registered 10 tier 2 agencies, and it has been suggested that another of the tier 1 MROs is preparing to emulate this approach. The MoJ claim that such actions have the potential to put at risk the chances of existing MROs to compete for selection, and also runs contrary to the policy objective of providing users with a range of seven different i.e. unconnected MROs to choose from. MedCo users who choose to select an MRO are provided with a list of seven, of which only one is a tier 1 provider. An unexpectedly large number of companies have registered at tier 1 in the absence of any official figures, it is said to be anywhere between 15 and 19 meaning that the market share for tier 1 firms which previously dominated the supply of reports has fallen significantly. This has led to the move to create tier 2 agencies to help fill the gap. MedCo has published a summary of legal advice it has received which indicates that MedCo does have the powers it needs to deal with the behaviours identified by the Ministry of Justice. We will update on the progress of Speed Medical s application. PAGE 4 Claim Portal Drop Out Cases Head for Court of Appeal The Court of Appeal has been asked to rule on the contentious issue of which fixed costs apply in Claims Portal drop-out cases when they settle before trial, which has led to several conflicting first instance decisions. 4 HHJ Wood QC, sitting in Liverpool, last month made a leapfrog order to send the case of Bird v Acorn Group directly to the Court of Appeal. The central issue arises from the practice of some county courts to list drop-out cases for a disposal hearing in the first directions order, arguably skipping a stage in the fixed costs tables in CPR 45.29, and the case subsequently settles before that disposal hearing. The question then is which stage has been reached and particularly whether the stages are sequential and whether a disposal hearing is a trial. In Bird, a public liability claim, the claimant argued for the third column, meaning costs of 3,790 plus 27.5% of the damages while the defendant contended that the first column still applied, meaning costs of 2,450 plus 17.5% of the damages. District Judge Campbell ruled in favour of the claimant, saying that once the matter was listed for disposal, the case, in my view, moved into column 3 and that, there is absolutely nothing in the rules that tells the court or the parties that they must move sequentially through the columns. HHJ Wood said: It is understood that whilst the costs involved on this occasion are relatively small, this situation is likely to arise in many hundreds of cases and will affect other interested parties, including insurers and litigation funders, who may wish to participate in the appeal process. The Court of Appeal has given a listing window between October 2015 and February 2016 and we will continue to report on this issue. This issue does not currently affect disease claims, as fixed costs do not presently apply to such claims when they fall out of the Portal: CPR 45.29A(2). However, in the event that a fixed costs regime is applied to disease drop-out cases in the future, this decision will be of some practical importance. Updated Claims Portal MI The Claims Portal has released its latest management information (MI) for May In May, 1,888 disease claims entered the Portal. Of the 1,888 claims that entered the Portal in May, 781 left it at Stage 1. The majority of these, 634, were because of the time to reply expired. 147 cases were denied or admitted with an allegation of contributory negligence. 25 claims left the Portal at Stage 2 for reasons other than settlement. 1,061 were exited from the Portal: amongst these, 174 were for other reasons, 103 were duplicate claims, and 295 were because of an incomplete claim notification form. 441 claims left the Portal because the claim required further investigation; this is unsurprising given that complex disease claims do not lend themselves to full investigation within 30 days. It is clear that significant numbers of cases are being removed from the Portal on the basis that further investigation is necessary. Congruent with the recent trend, there were a significant number of claims that settled through the Portal last

5 month: 86 claims settled in May bringing the total figure to 1,022. Meanwhile, an additional 5 cases have seen court packs completed so the court can adjudicate on quantum, bringing the total number of such cases to 110. Of those claims that have settled through the Portal, the average amount of damages in May was 3,997. In April the average amount was 4,358, down from 4,959 in March Payments on Account of Costs Can be Paid in CFA Cases, Says High Court The High Court has rejected an argument that it would be a breach of the indemnity principle to make a payment on account of costs to claimants funded by a conditional fee agreement (CFA). 5 The indemnity principle provides that a receiving party cannot recover more costs from the paying party than the receiving party is itself liable to pay. It was argued therefore that since the claimants had no current costs liability (since they had not yet won ), they could not recover any costs by reason of the indemnity principle. However, the argument was quickly dismissed by Mrs Justice Thirlwall in XYZ v Various [2015] EWHC 1151 (QB). The case is the well-known group action in which nearly 1,000 women are claiming damages from companies running private hospitals for supplying defective breast implants manufactured by the French company, PIP. PAGE 5 Last September, the judge granted an application to adjourn the trial listed for October pending resolution of litigation between one of the defendants, Transform Medical Group, and its insurer, Travelers. At the time of adjourning the trial, the judge ordered Transform and Travelers to pay the costs of the application to adjourn and the costs occasioned by the adjournment. Further, she ordered them to make a payment on account of those costs towards the claimants (the group of nearly 1,000 women). The claimants served a costs schedule totalling 706,000 (including VAT) for counsel s fees, expert fees and solicitor s fees. At a hearing to determine the payment on account, the defendants made their argument relying on the indemnity principle. In response, the claimants solicitor, Hugh James partner Mark Harvey, explained that the CFA agreed with the claimants included a clause that said: Where a summary assessment of costs or payment on account is made in your favour, you are immediately liable to pay your share of Hugh James s charges to the extent of the relevant summary assessment or payment on account. In effect, the claimants became liable to pay costs to their own representatives once a payment on account of costs was ordered in their favour. Mrs Justice Thirlwall said: As he [Harvey] points out, this clause is commonly found in CFAs as detailed in the Law Society model conditional fee agreement: if on the way to winning or losing you [the claimant] win an interim hearing [such as having a payment on account of costs awarded in your favour], then we [the representatives] are entitled to payment of our basic charges and disbursements related to that hearing together with a success fee on those charges if you win overall. She continued that it was therefore clear that the interim award of costs prior to the final completing of the case may be charged and recovered irrespective of the requirement to win the case at trial or later final determination In my judgment a payment on account of costs here could not involve a breach of the indemnity principle. Thirlwall J went on to reject a submission that she should make no order and leave the matter to the costs judge, before going on to consider what was a reasonable sum. After focusing in particular on counsel s fees, she ordered a total payment on account of costs of 283,500. This decision may be of some importance in disease litigation, where claims are often funded by CFAs. Feature: Muting NIHL Claims The ABI s Approach to Reform Introduction The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has set its sights firmly on noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) claims, warning in a new report published this week that the UK s ongoing compensation culture is resulting in thousands of people being misled into believing they are entitled to compensation for industrial deafness in consequence of claimant lawyers and claims management companies (CMCs) shifting their attention to more lucrative disease claims. In this article we explore the ABI s report, considering the issues that have arisen and the proposed remedial methods. Background The ABI s report, Noise Induced Hearing Loss Claims: Improving the Claims System for Everyone, 6 opens

6 with a history of NIHL litigation, 7 noting that the majority of historic NIHL claims arose from those working in heavy industries, resulting in the promulgation of the Iron Trade Deafness Scheme in It also explains that claims were driven by the unions, with the Scheme ending in 1998 with no new claims being accepted after It recalls that during the operation of the Scheme, NIHL claims peaked at 67,054 in 1993, before settling to a low of 5,346 in 2001 after the Scheme came to a close. More generally, the background to the report explains that public awareness of NIHL has increased over the years, with unions campaigning heavily on the effects of exposure to noise in the workplace. Indeed, in 1999, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) ran a campaign drawing attention to the issue of occupational hearing loss. In consequence, it is now a widely understood issue. The Scale of the Issue 8 The report goes on to explore the magnitude of modern NIHL litigation. Despite improvements in health and safety measures and better regulation, the report notes that insurers and compensators have experienced a significant increase in NIHL claims in recent years. It attributes this to the UK s compensation culture. In 2010, the report states, 24,352 NIHL claims were notified. But, by 2013, this had increased to 85,155 a staggering increase of almost 250% in just three years. The total estimated cost of these claims was over 400 million. While the report concedes that claims numbers peaked in 2013 following the introduction of the Jackson reforms, it notes that claims numbers remain high, with the estimated number of claims notified in 2014 being 39% higher than in Indeed, it should be noted that the statistics for 2013 are likely to be anomalously high on account of the introduction of the Jackson reforms and the deluge of claims that were notified prior to their introduction in April 2013 to benefit from a more beneficial procedural regime. But placing 2013 aside, it is clear that claims numbers have been increasing year on year significantly so in 2012 and 2014 since 2006, as the following graph shows: Furthermore the report explains that the increase in NIHL claims can be seen in the significant increase in the number of searches made through the Employers Liability Tracing Office (ELTO), figures that we have previously reported on. In 2014, there were 134,283 NIHL searches through ELTO, an increase of 40% from 2013, when 95,673 NIHL searches were made. The report goes on to contrast the dramatic increase in the number of notified NIHL claims in recent years with the number of settled claims which are paid, noting that settled claims have not increased at the same rate as notified claims. Indeed, in 2010, there were just over 10,000 claims that were paid, which increased to 15,632 paid claims in 2014, an increase of only 56%. The incongruence between notified claims and settled claims, the report says, shows the increasing number of unmeritorious claims that insurers and compensators are required to process. The numbers of settlements by year are shown in the following graph: The report then notes the cost of these claims numbers, stating that the estimated overall cost of NIHL claims to insurers has risen from just under 83 million in 2010 to over 360 million 2014 a more than four-fold increase in just four years. This increase, the report asserts, is a direct result of the UK s compensation culture rather than a genuine increase in people experiencing NIHL. The increase cannot be explained by any change in the law, new regulations or medical practices. The increase in costs over the years is shown below: PAGE 6

7 Alongside the astounding increase in costs, the report observes that a significant proportion of the cost of NIHL claims comprises disproportionate claimant representative fees. In 2013 the average compensation payment for a NIHL claim was 3,100, while average claimant legal costs were 10,400. Thus for every 1 paid to a claimant, over 3 was paid to their representative. It should also be noted that costs significantly in excess of 10,000 are not uncommon. Finally in respect of the scale of modern NIHL litigation, that report observes that while insurers and compensators are having to manage the increase in claims, most of them are unsuccessful. The industry average claims failure rate was 65% in Furthermore the rate is increasing, with one insurer reporting a failure rate of 85% in These failure rates, the report says, highlight two issues. Firstly, a significant number of submitted claims are of poor quality without any real prospect of success there can be no doubt about this. Secondly, insurers and compensators are being forced to direct significant resources to managing these spurious claims, which results in reducing the time spent on settling genuine claims. The Cause 9 What then is the cause of this increase in claims? The ABI states in the report that the Jackson reforms are to blame. In consequence of the reforms, low value road traffic (RTA) claims are less attractive to claimant lawyers and CMCs owing to the reduction in recoverable fees by around 60%. In consequence, claimant practitioners have refocused their attention to those claims, namely NIHL, where hourly fees remain potentially recoverable. Consequently, NIHL claims are aggressively farmed. Hourly fees are only recoverable where NIHL claims proceed outside of the Claims Portal. The ABI takes issue with NIHL claims not being processed through the Claims Portal. For the ABI, all NIHL claims are suitable for resolution through the Portal. But, the ABI says, there are a number of problems with the Portal in its present format. Firstly, the Portal excludes mutlidefendant claims and the majority of NIHL claims are multidefendant, meaning most NIHL claims are excluded from the Portal. Secondly, claimant practitioners often provide insufficient information in the Claim Notification Form (CNF), prolonging investigations by the insurer; this is compounded by the absence of a requirement to supply a copy of the claimant s HMRC schedule. Finally, the Portal does not allow sufficient time for insurers to make adequate investigations into potential liability, requiring a response within just 30 business days even though NIHL claims are difficult to investigate and often require the consideration of medical evidence, which is not provided at stage one of the Portal process. Therefore it is highly unusual for compensators to be PAGE 7 in the position to admit liability within 30 days. Consequently, few NIHL claims ever enter the Portal in the first place and, of those that do, very few settle in it: the report notes that only 3.6% of all 28,379 disease claims submitted to the Portal have settled within it. Coupling the small number of NIHL claims entering the Portal with the small number of disease claim settlements in the Portal, the report says that it is likely that only around 1% of all NIHL claims are settled within the Portal. It says that such a limited success rate for the Portal in respect of NIHL claims is stark. Moreover, the difference in potential claimant costs is significant the report observes that Portal costs would be fixed at 900 plus VAT in EL claims up to 10,000 in value, and 1,600 plus VAT in those EL claims valued at between 10,000 and 25,000, while average legal costs for NIHL claims in 2013 were 10,400. The report concludes: The ability for claimant lawyers to drive up excessive legal costs has led to many new entrants into the NIHL claims market including law firms that have traditionally handled RTA claims. This, together with increased claims farming, has driven the significant increase in NIHL claims that all compensators are now experiencing. There can be little doubt about the correctness of this proposition. Challenges in NIHL Litigation 10 The ABI s report then goes on to identify three distinct issues which, it says, leave NIHL claims open to abuse for financial gain by claimant practitioners. Firstly, it points to poor quality medical evidence, noting that it is difficult to secure high quality, independent medical evidence for these high volume, low value claims, just as it was with whiplash claims. The consequence in whiplash cases was the introduction of the MedCo portal. The ABI posits that NIHL claims are similar to whiplash claims in respect of medical evidence in that: there is a lack of independence between those commissioning audiograms and the audiologists conducting the audiometry; audiologists are insufficiently qualified; audiograms are obtained in unsuitable non-clinical surroundings; and reporting consultants are insufficiently objective in their approach. Secondly, the ABI says there are many unmerited claims for tinnitus. Since there is no objective test for tinnitus it is susceptible to exploitation for financial gain, the report says. Furthermore, like whiplash, the diagnosis of tinnitus is dependent on the history supplied by the claimant, which makes it difficult to dispute a claim for tinnitus. Finally, the report notes that claimant practitioners attempt to circumvent the limitation period for financial gain by arguing that claimants have only recently become aware that their hearing loss is noise induced, and that the limitation period only runs from the date that their client sought legal advice on the

8 issue. However, the report observes that awareness of NIHL in the public consciousness has been significantly excited by heavy campaigning by the unions and advertising by claimant lawyers, therefore many arguments on limitation simply seek to circumvent the limitation period for financial gain. Resolving the Issues 11 Having identified the issues the report concludes: The current compensation system is failing claimants and compensators. The UK s compensation culture is driving the increase in the number of unmeritorious NIHL claims, with claimant lawyers and CMCs chasing excessive profits from disproportionately high legal fees. The high volume of claims being submitted and the high legal costs both impact on compensators, businesses and public sector bodies alike. Consumers suffer as the additional costs feed through to higher insurance premiums, the price of goods and services and impacts on taxation. Genuine claimants also lose out as the current Claims Portal cannot be used for the vast majority of NIHL claims slowing down the process. NIHL claimants are therefore not enjoying the same fast and efficient process for handling their claim as those with other injury claims. To remedy the issues the ABI proposes three specific reforms to NIHL litigation. Firstly, the ABI proposes extending fixed costs to all fast track disease claims that fall outside of the Claims Portal. Noting that Lord Justice Jackson proposed fixed costs, the report says the failure to implement fixed costs has led to claimant practitioners targeting disease claims with a view to making profits, often practitioners who lack the skills and knowledge to process disease claims efficiently. The report calls for the recommendation to be implemented and for the fixed costs to be set at a level which reflects the steps required by a claimant solicitor to present and run a successful claim, ensuring they are contained and proportionate. genuinely injured claimants receive compensation without undue delay. Finally, the ABI calls for extension of the MedCo portal to all NIHL claims. It says the underlying ethos of independence in medical reporting should be capable of extension to all low value claims and there are concerns around the quality and independence of medico-legal reporting for NIHL claims. The report says extending the portal would be beneficial to claimants and compensators alike and has the potential to drive down the volume of unmeritorious claims presented. Access to justice would be preserved as genuine claims based on independent medical evidence of hearing loss attributable to noise exposure at work would be able to proceed quickly and efficiently; whilst those not capable of being substantiated independently would be identified at an early stage and would not proceed. Comment and Conclusion The report certainly draws attention to many of the issues in NIHL litigation. It will be interesting to see what, if any, response is given by the Government and what, if any, reforms follow. More generally, it should be noted that the report is the first in the ABI s series, Tackling the Compensation Culture. The second report in the series will be published later this year. Next week in Disease News we analyse the ABI s proposals in further detail and set out reasons why the proposed ABI reforms may not result in the intended desires to drive down NIHL claims volumes and curtail unmeritorious NIHL claims. Secondly, the report calls for the EL/PL Protocol/Claims Portal process to be amended to bring multi-defendant claims within its scope. Alternatively, it calls for a new low value disease protocol. Any protocol should as a minimum, the report says: have a timetable appropriate to low value disease claims, require disclosure of evidence of employment (specifically a HMRC schedule), allow for multi-defendant claims and allow for liability to be admitted subject to causation. The ABI says a streamlined process with fixed costs will serve to reduce the drivers behind the compensation culture which has penetrated NIHL claims so that insurers and other compensators can focus their efforts on ensuring that PAGE 8

9 References 1 Nick Hilborne, Only 4% of CMC complaints relate to personal injury work, LeO reveals (Legal Futures, 5 June 2015) < accessed 15 June Nick Hilborne, Only One Solicitor Sent to SDT Over Referral Fee Ban as Large CMCs Thrive (Legal Futures, 9 June 2015) < accessed 15 June Neil Rose, Ministry of Justice Tells MedCo to Stop Big MROs Registering Multiple Smaller Agencies (Litigation Futures, 11 June 2015) < accessed 16 June Dispute Over Costs of Portal Drop-Out Cases Leapfrogged to Court of Appeal (Litigation Futures, 10 June 2015) < accessed 17 June Neil Rose, Indemnity Principle Argument Fails to Stop Payment on Account of Costs in CFA Case (Litigation Futures, 27 April 2015) < accessed 17 June ABI, Noise Induced Hearing Loss Claims: Improving the Claims System for Everyone (ABI, Tackling the Compensation Culture, June 2015) < accessed 18 June ibid ibid ibid ibid ibid PAGE 9

10 WHAT S NEW? BC Disease News Edition 100 Anniversary Quiz To commemorate the upcoming 100 th anniversary edition of BC Disease News we have once again devised an online quiz based on previous editions. The top prize will be a two night mini-break to Rome for two people (flights and hotel). There is a range of other prizes. To enter the quiz, simply click here. Complete the quiz and leave your details as directed. Entries must be received by midday on Thursday 25 June and one response is permitted per computer. Winners will be announced in edition 100. Winners will be selected at random from correct responses. Best of luck! Disclaimer This newsletter does not present a complete or comprehensive statement of the law, nor does it constitute legal advice. It is intended only to provide an update on issues that may be of interest to those handling occupational disease claims. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in any particular case. BC Legal BC Legal is a trading name of BC Legal Limited which is registered in England and Wales under company number We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The registered office is 1 Nelson Mews, Southend-on-Sea, SS1 1AL. The partners are Boris Cetnik and Charlotte Owen. More details on the firm can be found at PAGE 10

11 PAGE 11 Partners: B. Cetnik, C. Owen Registered Office: 1 Nelson Mews, Southend-On-Sea, SS1 1AL BC Legal is a trading name of BC Legal Limited which is registered in England and Wales under company number We are Authorised and Regulated by the Solicitors Regulations Authority (SRA No )