How are civil judgments most typically settled? A is suing B, and the court has awarded A £5000. Who decides how this balance should be paid, and what is the most common method of payment? Is it usually done through a bank transfer or a cheque? Can A insist on a cash settlement?
I can't say how they are typically settled, and there are no hard-and-rules that I can find. However, Gov.uk offers this: You’ll have to pay the person or business you owe the money to, or their solicitor. The name and address will be on the judgment form. Do not pay the court. Make sure you can prove you’ve paid. Send a cheque or postal order by post, or make a bank transfer. Do not send cash through the post. Keep a record of your payments and make sure you pay in time. If you’re paying in instalments, ask the person or business you owe the money to about the best way to pay. You may want to set up a standing order to pay the money directly from your bank account. As for A insisting on a cash payment, it's B's debt and as long as it's not unreasonable and in accordance with the Order B should decide on how it is settled if they can't come to an amicable arrangement.
The main free resource is Bailii. I've sometimes also found cases on Casemine, which is free. The most popular paid resources are Lexis and Westlaw. In general, the paid databases are more complete and provide additional useful features such as cross-referencing statutes and cited/citing cases, information on whether the case is still good law or not, and others. For this luxury you will pay a heavy price: typically a few thousand a year depending on what type of subscription you take out. If you are lucky you can get free access via a university course. With that said, Bailii can sometimes have judgments not found on the others; particularly unreported judgments. Ideally as a professional you would have access to all three if you can afford to do so. If you want a specific case and can't find it on any database you may be able to ask the court to provide a transcript, usually for a fee.
The reference to £8,000 suggests to me the question relates to civil, rather than criminal, legal aid in england-and-wales so, subject to a few exceptions, ... ...an applicant will be eligible for civil legal aid where their monthly disposable income does not exceed £733 and their disposable capital does not exceed £8,000. Source Notwithstanding the exceptions and considerations to take in to account when calculating disposable capital, the starting point is ... ... the value of every resource of a capital nature belonging to the party on the date on which the application for remission is made, unless it is treated as income by this Order, or it is disregarded as excluded disposable capital. Source
You are looking for the Judicial College Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases, which had its sixteenth edition published in April 2022. This book sets out the range of compensation based on the type of injury suffered. The scale is very detailed. For example, we can find in Chapter 7, (G) Injuries to the elbow (a) A severely disabling injury - £39170 to £54830 (b) Less severe injuries causing impairment of function but not involving major surgery or significant disability - £15650 to £32010 (c) Moderate or minor injury (i) Injuries fully resolving after about one year - In the region of £3530 (ii) Injuries with the majority of symptoms resolving within 18 to 24 months but with nuisance level symptoms persisting after that - In the region of £6500 (iii) Injuries recovering after three years with nuisance symptoms thereafter and/or requiring surgery - Up to £12590 There are lots of other rules about the calculations, which are beyond what can be summarised in a text box. In the case of assault, one might find reference to Chapter 4, which is on psychiatric effects including PTSD, as well as to the physical injuries. Probably the most important note is that they are Guidelines, not Rules, and so the court can deviate from them at its pleasure. But this is what the judge will have at their fingertips during the proceedings. Because these concern damages, receipt of an award will depend on whether the respondent actually has the money. For that reason, there is a statutory scheme, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, which can make additional payments to victims of violent crime. CICS awards are reduced based on civil damages already paid, because you can't be compensated twice for the same injury. They are also calculated after any insurance payout, so it's in the nature of a final resort. The CICS tariffs are not the same as the JCG ones. Taking the elbow example, CICS 2012 rates damage to one elbow with substantial recovery at £1500 (level A2), and with continuing significant disability at £6200 (level A7). Other eligibility rules and procedures are different as well. In practice, the majority of CICS awards are for between £1000 and £2400 (bands A1 to A4); there is a proposed simplification of the bands into fewer levels, but this has not yet been implemented.
The official judgements do not reveal the funding for these lawyers; so where can I find this information? Nowhere. The commercial arrangements between lawyers and their clients are private and confidential like any other business transactions. You have no more right to know this then you do to know how your neighbour pays their mortgage. how could she have funded litigation in the EWHC and then EWCA before the UKSC? She may have rich parents or another benefactor who has in interest in her or the outcome of the case. She may have won the lottery. She may be the heiress of a dead rich uncle. By the way, "having" student loans does not mean you "need" student loans. Interest rates on student loans are cheap - if I need to pay $10,000 for a course and have $10,000 earning 5%, I would be nuts to use that if I could take out a loan at 3%.
Civil cases are frequently decided by arbitration (a non-court process), so there's nothing particularly problematic here. Both parties have to agree to participate in the process, and one may (but need not) assume that there is a clause that the losing party has to live with the outcome. Odds are good that the parties are paid to participate, so there would be incentive to accept the verdict. One difference between this show (apparently) and a normal binding arbitration clause is that with the latter, this is part of the original contract which would state that all disputes must be resolved by such-and-such arbitration firm. Such verdicts are generally enforceable, unless there is some extreme impropriety (e.g. the defendant bribes the arbitration firm to flagrantly overlook the law). In the present case, torts as well as contracts can be the subject of a show, and the arbitration agreement would be separate from and after any underlying contract. A lot depends on the agreement that the show has participants sign. The Facebook-jury would, of course, not pass any form of scrutiny in a real court. So it is possible that afterwards, an unhappy party can press the case in real court, without prejudice.
If the accident was your fault, the person harmed by the accident has a right to sue you for the amount of damages incurred, and will prevail if they can prove your fault and their damages in court. You don't have to settle the case at all. You could simply wait for them to sue you, although doing so would result in a claim against your car insurance policy that could increase your insurance rates if they did, in fact, sue you. Whether or not you find their representation concerning the amount of damage they suffered sufficient is up to you. They will only get paid if you decide to write them a check in the amount that they are asking to have paid. Usually, you should also insist that a complete release of liability be signed by the party harmed in connection with any settlement payment.
It has to be 'liquidated damages', since a penalty clause is unenforceable. It has to have a reasonable relation to the party's legitimate interest. The point is that it has to represent a good faith estimate of the actual damage.