Carpenters no win no fee

[Letmegetoff]

My husband had a car accident in April and was contacted my Carpenters Insurance to deal with the injury claim.

He had some back pain after the accident which started to ease a lot so he cancelled the agreement (they were also very pushy and bombarded him with phone calls which was really off-putting and another reason he did not want to carry on with the claim) with carpenters via email. I still have the emails and I'm almost certain they were sent within the 14 day cooling off period.

Today an email has come through from carpenters that says...

We refer to the above matter.
I note that you have not responded to my previous correspondence and failed to attend the medical appointment
and have therefore breached the terms of the Conditional Fee (No Win–No Fee) Agreement between us and I
write to inform you that the agreement is now terminated with immediate effect.
As I do not have your instructions, I am professionally compromised and as I do not have any security as to your
legal costs, I am to close your file of papers immediately.
Your file will now be passed to our costs Debt Recovery Department and this Firm shall shortly be sending you a
bill in respect of the costs and disbursements this Firm has incurred whilst pursuing this matter on your behalf.
Finally I am duty bound to inform you that if by the third anniversary of your accident, if County Court
proceedings have not been issued at Court this will render your case being statute barred in accordance with the
Limitations Act 1980.

I cannot find the original paperwork of when the agreement started but I am sure it was within the cooling off period. A medical appt was never confirmed because we had already sent the cancellation email.

What is likely to happen next, I'm really quite worried and only saw the email after they closed so can't call until tomorrow

Ask them for a copy of the contract. A 14 day cooling off period sounds unusual to me but I'm not an injury lawyer so maybe these things exist

That must be worrying but that's good you have the emails. Can't you check if it was within the 14 days cool off? Do you have the original contract?

I can't find the original agreement, it must have been via post as i would still have emails
I'll have to ask them for it. They were so full on and wouldn't stop calling which was the main reason my husband decided not to continue. They have literally taken no action though because the medical never happened because my husband already changed his mind by then

Your right to cancel
The Consumer Contracts (Information,
Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations
2013 apply to your claim which means you have
a right to cancel your instructions to us within 14
days. This can be done via email, post or by using
the Cancellation Notice attached to your client
care letter. However, once you have received our
terms of business and we start work on your file,
you will be liable for our costs

This is still on their online details about using their services so I remembered that bit correctly.

I'm spiralling a bit about this, really could do without it just before Xmas, we thought we had done everything correctly

Do you work in a legal profession?

Their reviews online are all terrible 😫i feel so worried

I'd ask for the contract and then work out if you did cancel within the 14 day period

If you are obliged to pay, you can ask for a breakdown of their fees.

Could your husband just continue to use them? A lot of injury firms are the same so it might be easier to stick with them then try and find somebody else. That way you avoid any costs.

I can guarantee you'd end up chasing them during the life of the claim.

He doesn't want to make a claim at all now, the injury isn't as bad as it seemed at first.

I've emailed them so the ball is in their court now.

It sounds like your husband initially instructed them to deal with his claim and then changed his mind. Steps would have been taken to progress the matter including arranging a Medical appt. There would have been letters/emails chasing instructions. Did your husband respond to these and cancel any medical appt arranged for him? He can cancel his instructions at any time but if a valid retainer was entered into and he changed his mind he will have to pay those costs incurred up until he cancelled. I know your husband no longer wishes to claim but it might be cheaper for him to do this. Unfortunately law firms are a private business and they will charge for work undertaken that they can no longer claim back from the other side when a client discontinues their claim.

An email was sent cancelling within the 14 day cooling off period, should that not be enough? They seem to have ignored this email/not looked at this email, it was sent to 2 of their contact email addresses.

There were phonecalls but no further letters or emails, there was definitely a phone call with the medical centre where my husband advised them the instructions had been cancelled.

If we had left it too late to cancel should they not have contacted us and advised us of this? There has been no contact from them for months now so we assumed it was all put to bed

Your husband can cancel his instructions at any time. He will just need to pay for any work undertaken on his behalf from the date he confirmed his instructions and received Carpenters terms of business as per your post above until the date of the email cancelling his instructions. Sounds like the email wasn’t received by Carpenters/didn’t find its way to the file (which is very common in my experience due to changing handlers there) I’m sure if your husband sends it in to the costs department when he receives his bill they will look into it further and hopefully cancel the same if it was within the 14 days.