How will your dental negligence case be paid for?

We will always find the best method of funding for your individual case. Broadly speaking, there are 3 options available to you:

Legal Expenses Insurance for dental negligence claims

Legal Expenses Insurance (LEI) can be purchased to fund the costs of legal advice and/or the costs of bringing or defending a legal claim in court. LEI can be bought “before the event” or “after the event”.

Many people have already taken out a “before the event” LEI policy as an add-on to their Home and Contents Insurance, or perhaps with their bank or credit card.

LEI can cover a wide range of legal complaints and may provide cover for a medical negligence complaint.

Therefore, before we consider other methods of funding, we send you a document to assist you in checking whether you already have the benefit of LEI. If you do have an LEI policy, then we can make enquiries on your behalf with the provider as to whether they will provide cover for your medical negligence complaint.  If you are unsure whether you an LEI policy, we recommend you contact your insurer directly; they will be able to assist you and advise you whether or not you have LEI in place. Alternatively, we will be happy to check your policy documentation for you.

If you establish that you do not have the benefit of LEI, then we shall consider the other available options for funding.

Conditional Fee Agreements for a dental negligence claim

Commonly known as “No Win, No Fee agreements”, Conditional Fee Agreements (CFA’s) are an excellent method of funding a clinical negligence claim.

In order to determine whether your case is suitable for a CFA, details of your case will be sent to the CFA risk assessment panel here at Royds Withy King, made up of partners from the Clinical Negligence Team. They will make an assessment as to whether your case has reasonable prospects of success.

If the panel considers that your case does have reasonable prospects of success, your case will be approved for a CFA and the relevant paperwork will be sent to you.

If you win the case, the Dental Negligence Team would seek to recover the costs and disbursements incurred from your opponent. However, there will be certain items which cannot be recovered, and which you will be liable for. These include the premium for the insurance which we need to take out on your behalf (“after the event insurance policy”) and any Success Fee we charge. This will ultimately be deducted from your damages and the member of the Dental Negligence Team who is responsible for your case will be able to advise you in more detail of these deductions at the relevant time.

We always guarantee that you will retain a minimum of 75% of your damages regardless of any deductions that need to be made.

Most importantly, if you lose the case, you will be charged nothing and you will not be liable to pay either our costs or the opponents’ costs.

Funding a dental negligence claim privately

If your case does not have good enough prospects for a CFA, and LEI is unavailable, we may agree to do a preliminary investigation for you for at a fixed fee. This may involve asking you to obtain your own dental records and an opinion from a dental expert. If the investigation is positive, we will then reconsider offering you a CFA.

Find out more about funding and the process of making a dental negligence claim here: