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injuries? A GP, a chiropractor, an osteopath, a junior house officer, a consultant rheumatologist, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, or perhaps a consultant neurosurgeon?

0.5 Once the medical report is received and compared with the opposition's report, how is the lawyer to decide which medical expert is right about the seriousness and longevity of the symptoms? Where can one go to seek confirmation of the opinions set out in the reports and an explanation of the terminology?

0.6 For many years those connected with personal injury claims have become increasingly concerned about polarisation of medical views. Sometimes the expert for the Defendant, instructed regularly by large insurance companies, will conclude that the Claimant's whiplash injury should have resolved within 3-6 months of the accident and that any symptoms continuing thereafter are imagined, faked or related to some other pre-accident cause such as degeneration. On the other hand the expert for the Claimant, regularly instructed by Claimant lawyers, may conclude that scores of different whiplash victims upon whom he prepares reports all have strikingly similar complaints, despite suffering relatively minor accidents, and all have permanent and untreatable symptoms which will ruin the Claimants' working lives.

0.7 Although research shows that around 85% of personal injury claims are settled without trial, the cases which do go to trial are not always those which are most in need of judicial determination. Consensus is needed. For many Claimants achieving proper compensation without a trial is the most satisfactory conclusion to their claims. For some the thought of a trial is not just fearsome but positively damaging to their recovery.³ If the medical reports in marginal cases are prepared by experts with views outside the mainstream the likelihood of settlement is markedly reduced and costs are increased, the length of the trial is prolonged and one side or other will come away from the trial having lost.

0.8 Many practitioners will also have come across the curious spectacle of a county court judge considering the conflicting evidence of two eminent consultant