A joint settlement meeting is the workhorse of settlement in litigated personal injury claims. It is a without-prejudice meeting at which both sides attend with their representatives, exchange views on liability and quantum, and negotiate in real time. Unlike a mediation, a JSM traditionally has no neutral chair — though parties increasingly appoint a facilitator to keep the day structured, particularly where there are several defendants or insurers behind them.
When a JSM earns its place
JSMs suit multi-track claims where the evidence is largely complete: medical evidence exchanged, schedules and counter-schedules served, and the real issues narrowed to a handful of figures. At that point a day of structured negotiation is usually cheaper than a trial and faster than correspondence. Some claims justify an earlier meeting — for example where liability is admitted and the argument is about care, accommodation or future loss multipliers, or where an interim payment dispute is blocking rehabilitation.
The procedural backdrop matters. The court’s duty of active case management includes “encouraging the parties to use an alternative dispute resolution procedure if the court considers that appropriate” (CPR r.1.4(2)(e)). Since Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council [2023] EWCA Civ 1416 and the rule changes that followed in October 2024, courts can go further and order the parties to engage in ADR or stay proceedings for it. An unreasonable refusal to negotiate carries costs risk: Halsey v Milton Keynes General NHS Trust [2004] EWCA Civ 576 set the framework, and PGF II SA v OMFS Company 1 Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 1288 confirmed that silence in the face of an invitation to ADR is, as a general rule, itself unreasonable.
Preparation decides the outcome
Most JSMs that fail on the day were lost in the fortnight before it. The essentials:
- Position papers. Short, exchanged in advance, and honest about the weaknesses each side already knows the other will raise. A position paper that reads like an opening speech wastes the morning.
- An agreed bundle. One set of schedules, counter-schedules and the key expert evidence. Arguments about which report is current burn negotiating time.
- Authority. Each side needs someone present — or reachable throughout — with authority to settle at realistic figures, including any CRU liability and the costs of the action. Discovering at 4pm that the figure on the table needs a committee is the commonest avoidable failure.
- The Part 36 position. Existing offers frame the day. Both teams should arrive knowing precisely what is on the table, when it expires, and what the costs consequences of beating or failing to beat it would be.
What happens on the day
The usual shape: the teams occupy separate rooms; representatives meet to open; offers then move between rooms with reasons attached. Meetings work best when each movement of money is tied to an issue — a concession on the care rate, a revised multiplier — rather than unexplained splitting of differences. Where a facilitator is appointed, their job is momentum: keeping the sequence of offers moving, testing reasoning privately in each room, and stopping the day from stalling on a single figure.
Everything said is without prejudice. If the claim settles, the terms go into a consent order or Tomlin order. If it does not, nothing said can be deployed at trial, and the day still tends to pay for itself: issues narrow, the genuine distance between the parties becomes visible, and a later Part 36 offer can be pitched with far better information.
Getting the other side to the table
Invitations to a JSM should be specific: a proposed window, a venue or remote format, who will attend, and what needs to be exchanged first. A vague suggestion of “a meeting in due course” is easy to ignore; a concrete proposal creates the costs risk that PGF II attaches to silence. For defendants and insurers, proposing the meeting early — with a realistic agenda — is often the cheapest case-management decision available. For claimant teams, a well-prepared JSM is frequently the fastest route to a figure a client can actually weigh.