QOCS to discrimination!
The campaign for no win no fee discrimination lawyers.
If you read nothing else read this paragraph: there is a rule called qualified one way cost shifting that applies to personal injury cases. It makes it financially safer for individuals to sue big companies. It’s the reason you can get no win no fee lawyers for personal injury cases. There is a push to extend this rule to discrimination cases to make it easier to get a lawyer and sue if you’ve been discriminated against and you can support this by signing the linked petition.
Click Here for the Petition
At the moment if an autistic person (or anyone else protected under the equality act) is discriminated against unless it’s in a special category like work or school their only way to get protection or compensation is to sue someone.
In many cases that can be done through the small claims track which has been designed to be simple enough that you don’t need a lawyer. And because of that even if people do use lawyers on the small claims track usually the looser doesn’t have to pay for the winners lawyer.
However if your discrimination lawsuit is for a lot of money or is unusually complicated it will probably go to the fast track where the process is more complex and the looser usually pays for the winners lawyer which can be very expensive.
This is a problem for autistic people because autism is a hidden disability where most of the public has a poor understanding of how it effects us. This includes judges who are often going to want experts to testify about the role autism played in the case which often leaves autistic people facing the fast track and it’s huge fees.
The court system has already faced a similar problem in personal injury cases where you typically have an injured party who may be suing for a lot of money if they are badly injured yet may be very poor and where the court is going to want at least one medical expert to testify about the injury. These cases also tend to end up on the fast track and it used to be a real obstacle for personal injury cases ever getting to court.
So the government made a rule. If it’s a personal injury cases the injured person never has to pay more to the other sides lawyer than they’ve won (which if they loose will be nothing). They call this qualified one way cost shifting (QOCS) and it’s one of the reasons no win no fee lawyers exist. Because it means a lawyer can represent you if they think you’ll win with out having to take out expensive insurance to pay the other side if you loose.
For a long time disabled people have been pushing the government to extend QOCS to discrimination cases. The government has even been taken to court to try and force them to do this and got out of it by telling the judge they were still making up their mind whether to do it or not. So this is your chance to help them make their mind up. Sign the petition and send a message to the government and parliament that autistic people and others with complex cases still deserve their day in court.