Read More
How to act sensibly in criminal matters - most of all, be practical.
ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
I have a friend who was involved in a minor car accident and the other driver offered to settle the matter out of court for a relatively small sum of money, but my friend insisted the damaged car be brought to a garage for a quotation.
Needless to say, the other driver then reported to the police and from the evidence in the CCTV footage my friend got charged with careless driving and ended up having to go to court and pay a fine, plus pay the other driver an even bigger sum than was originally quoted.
A second case involving another friend was more serious: going through a red light and hitting a taxi.
He is a lawyer and was only insured for third-party cover as his own vehicle was quite old.
Instead of finding out how much the taxi driver wanted on a without-prejudice basis, he did nothing other than inform his insurers. They sent him the usual letter to warn him about the consequences of admitting liability so he ended up being charged with dangerous driving.
I feel the insurers could have been more proactive and should have assigned a lawyer on their approved panel to advise him earlier to enter into without-prejudice negotiations through the police to settle the matter before he got charged.
A word of caution here is that one has to be careful not to pervert the course of justice, meaning you cannot say, for example, I will only pay you if you withdraw your complaint. There are ways of doing it properly as the taxi driver does not want to go to court either if he is compensated as soon as possible.
In fact, the police encourage such settlement as there is less work for them unless there is a personal injury involved.
For criminal cases, you have to watch out for touts hanging around the bars in Wan Chai who work for law firms who may advise otherwise and may not even give receipts for initial deposit made on account of fees.
Always be sure to ask for receipts and for a retainer letter as in criminal matters all law firms have to comply with rule 5D of the Solicitors' Practice Rules, which require a solicitor to do the following:
(a) as soon as practicable and not more than seven days after receiving instructions, the firm shall confirm by letter to the client:
(i) the instructions given by the client;
(ii) the services to be provided by the firm;
(iii) the name of the solicitor in charge of the matter;
(iv) the fee to be charged or an estimate of such fee; and
(v) the name of counsel, his fee and any refreshers, or an estimate of such fee and refreshers, and the firm shall secure the written and signed agreement of the client to those terms;
Last, I want to say I am happy to see the appointment of John Lee Ka-chiu as, being a former police officer, he would be more down to earth and in touch with the people than Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor.
And I hope that he will be better able to help fill up the 5,000 vacancies in the police force so that we do not need to recruit from the mainland.
I understand about 470 police officers were injured during the protests brought about by Lam's ill-considered policies.
My money is on Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung to be chief secretary as he should be rewarded for the work of the police who acted with restraint during the protests. Not a single protester was killed by police, notwithstanding the violent acts of some of the protesters.
Susan Liang is a lawyer who likes to speak her mind on issues that concern the man on the street
