Being sued for £10.000

boogiemaster

At Christmas a BMW ran into the back of my car and my insurance company decided i was to blame.

So in January my insurance company pays the other party.
Today i receive a letter from a company saying i am being sued for £10.000 and £6.000 is for car hire charges and the rest is loss of earnings etc.
I am on benefits and don't have £10.000 so what will happen?

vaporate

Will need more details. There is no way you can be sued for £10 000, especially without stating WHY.

Sagaris

Just send everything on to your insurance company - that's what they are for! My mum's just had a similar thing happen to her - they thought by sending her the threatening 'we are suing you' letter she would be scared into paying up - she almost did!

We sent it on to Saga and they are not paying either - they settled the original claim and now the other party has hired an ambulance chaser company to claim for all sorts of things - £900 car hire for 10 days (must have been a Ferrari LOL), £75 for postage and phone calls and interest charged at 36% on the whole lot! So they are letting it go to court - can't wait to see what happens! But they have assured my mum she is not liable for any of this claim.

Jo_F

Erm, if someone went into the back of your car, then how are you being blamed for it?

dreamypuma

boogiemaster wrote: »

At Christmas a BMW ran into the back of my car and my insurance company decided i was to blame.

So in January my insurance company pays the other party.
Today i receive a letter from a company saying i am being sued for £10.000 and £6.000 is for car hire charges and the rest is loss of earnings etc.
I am on benefits and don't have £10.000 so what will happen?

Under the circumstances, I wouldn't lose sleep over a tenner.

barvid

vaporate wrote: »

Will need more details. There is no way you can be sued for £10 000, especially without stating WHY.

You can be sued... it's just whether it will be successful that's important. I could sue Gordon Brown for anything I like tomorrow, but I wouldn't win.

hoyles10

Jo_F wrote: »

Erm, if someone went into the back of your car, then how are you being blamed for it?

Having worked in insurance and accident management I was thinking the same. The only reason I could think of is no break lights but that's still a grey area.

pendulum

The most important thing you must do is tell your insurance company (the one which you had cover with at the time of the accident) exactly what you have received. If the BMW driver takes you to court and wins, it will be your insurance company that pays up, not you, so they are directly affected by this and need to know about it so they can prepare a defence. If you don't tell them, and thereby don't give them a chance to prepare a defence and minimise their payout, then things probably aren't going to work out good for you.

So tell your insurance company straight away. They will care more about this than you should, because they will have to pay up if you are successfully sued in court for the car hire and loss of earnings, not you.

Tell them! It isn't optional, you have to.

I also would like to know the reasoning behind your insurance company accepting that you were liable after you were struck from behind. This is very very rare and I can only imagine there must have been exceptional circumstances, e.g. the driver has independent witness(es) to say you reversed in to him. Either that or you totally damned yourself on the claim form, e.g. "Berk was tailgating me for miles, so I slammed the brakes on to teach him a lesson, knowing full well the idiot wouldn't be able to stop in time". (But even then...)

Hintza

Interesting case.


Speculation on how the OP might be liable:-

Spun car into oncoming traffic?

pinkshoes

boogiemaster wrote: »

At Christmas a BMW ran into the back of my car and my insurance company decided i was to blame.

Huh?!?!

Could you please explain what you did to make this your fault?

If he ran directly into the back of you, then that would be HIS fault for being too close to the back of your car, as he should have left enough space to stop in an emergency stop...

I would be phoning up your insurance company, and telling them that you are NOT happy with you being given blame, and that it is 100% fault of the other driver (unless you had no brake lights...).

If they're suing you for £10k, then your insurance company need to deal with it, but as they've decided this was your fault, this will probably put your premium up to a ridiculous amount, so if you're on benefits and strapped for cash, you might not be able to afford to drive any more!!

Can you please explain in detail what happened, as this sounds bizarre.

Personally I would be insisting to the insurance company that I was NOT to blame, and indicating that this is insurance fraud.

Mark_Hewitt

It's very rare being hit from behind can be considered your fault. The only ones I can think of are if you deliberately 'slammed on' in order to make him crash into you. Or you reversed into him.

But 99.9% of the time if someone runs into the back of you, it is their fault!