The annual Manchester Legal Walk took place on 30^th September 2010. Lining up at the start of the 10km course alongside over 50 other teams were staff from John Pickering and Partners LLP.

The aim of the event was to raise funds and awareness for the North West Legal Support Trust. A relatively new charity, established in 2009, it works with organisations around the North West to provide free legal advice to members of the public who would otherwise be disadvantaged.

The funding of civil legal aid is set to be dramatically decreased in the course of the Government’s public spending cuts. This reduction in funds will threaten valuable resources such as the South Manchester and Wythenshawe Law Centres. The support that these and other organisations provide to members of the public on matters such as debt, homelessness and family issues is invaluable.

The course wound its way around the streets of Manchester talking in all of the sights of the city. Our team successfully completed the walk in a very respectable 1 hour 15 minutes. Prior to the walk the team set themselves a fundraising target of £250 and succeeded in raising almost double.

If you would like to donate please visit our Just Giving page at:- www.justgiving.com/John-Pickering-and-Partners

For more information on the North West Legal Support Trust visit their website at:- http://www.nwlst.org.uk/

Contact details:

Telephone: 0161 834 1251                
E-mail: hort@johnpickering.co.uk       
Website: www.johnpickering.co.uk               
FREEPHONE: 0808 1440957      

ABOUT JOHN PICKERING AND PARTNERS LLP

John Pickering and Partners LLP

We are a specialist personal injury law firm.  We have been handling claims for industrial disease for over 30 years.  Most of our work involves acting for asbestos disease victims. 

We only act for the sufferers of asbestos diseases and never act for the organisations that caused the asbestos exposure or their insurers.  We have an ethical approach and pledge to donate 10% of our net profits every year to good causes that help asbestos sufferers. 

Click here to find out about our donations to good causes.  We have also been involved in most of the landmark judgments that shape this area of law.  Find out more about us or find out about our reported cases.  We are on the panels of several asbestos support groups and are ranked highly by legal guides.  Click here to find out more about what others have said about us.

John Pickering and Partners LLP is a niche legal practice that has represented Claimants in the leading asbestos "test cases" in the last ten years. The firm represented Sylvia Barker in Barker v Corus (UK) Plc, a case that highlighted the legal tactics of employers and insurers trying to cut back their compensation liabilities to mesothelioma sufferers, and which prompted the amendment of the Compensation Act 2006 to ensure full compensation for mesothelioma claims. The firm represented two of the three Claimants in the Fairchild appeal, in which the insurance industry tried unsuccessfully to block compensation altogether for mesothelioma sufferers unable to identify which of two or more sources of asbestos exposure had caused their illness.

The firm represented Alice Jefferson, a mesothelioma sufferer, whose illness and compensation claim against Cape Asbestos were featured in the important documentary "Alice: A Fight For Life."   Shown by Yorkshire Television in July 1982, the programme was an important catalyst for legal change and public awareness of the plight of mesothelioma and other asbestos disease sufferers and a prompt for important legal reform.

Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that affects the lining of certain bodily organs.  It most commonly affects the lining of the lungs (the pleura) but it can affect other areas including organs in the abdominal cavity (the peritoneum).

According to the British Lung Foundation, more than 2,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma every year in the UK and there is one mesothelioma death every five hours. The number of deaths from mesothelioma increased from 153 in 1968 to 1,969 in 2004 and is expected to peak at 2,450 between 2011 and 2015.

The British Lung Foundation, supported by John Pickering and Partners LLP, launched the first Action Mesothelioma Day on 27th February 2006, to raise awareness about mesothelioma, to improve the treatment and care of mesothelioma patients, and to lobby for better funding for research into mesothelioma and for the protection and education of people working with asbestos.

If you need advice about an asbestos related illness, contact us now for information about making a claim for compensation.

We also do Clinical and Medical Negligence work. Our clients are people who have suffered injury as a result of a medical accident in the UK.  We handle negligence claims against hospitals, GP’s and other medical practitioners for clients across the UK. 

We try to obtain maximum amounts of compensation. 

We are committed to providing public funding (previously known as Legal Aid) and have a franchise from the Community Legal Services Commission.  This means that they have looked at the firm carefully and approved of the way we work.  They consider that we are medical negligence claims specialists.  They trust us to handle medical accident claims properly. 

If you are not eligible for Public Funding, we can offer a Conditional Fee Agreement, also known as a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement with insurance.  We shall check the best method of funding your claim. 

All 3 of our offices (Liverpool, Manchester and Halifax) are accredited by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. 

Claire Horton is an experienced Clinical Negligence Solicitor who is based in our Manchester office.  She continues to practice as an independent funding adjudicator for the Legal Services Commission and acts on a pro-bono basis for the AvMA helpline.

For further advice on medical negligence in Liverpool please contact Rachel Donovan and for Halifax contact Ruth Davies, who are both experienced in the field of Clinical Negligence.

We provide free initial advice to people seeking information about a potential Clinical Negligence claim.