Question regarding Car Write off!

flutterbybutterfly

F!nhuner wrote:

The other party is still denying that they ran the red lights so her insurance are still denying liability even though she was charged by the police and 2 independant witnesses say she ran the red lights. I still think they are chancing their arm as I have not received a counter claim as their insured's car was also written off.

Same here F!n, the other party in my case turned across oncoming traffic when she should have given way as I said in previous post, she is being prosecuted etc.. and I have witness statements etc to collaborate my side, however we have the same situation regarding liabilty.

I have been told it is probably not the other party failing to admit liability but the other party's insurance company trying to squeeze out of a settlement with my insurance company by trying to make out she is somehow not liable despite police evidence to the contrary.

I have instructed a solicitor to deal with them now as I refuse to deal with call centre agents who are trying to deal with the case without the necessary expertise on such matters. From Monday when my solictor letter hits their desk, they will legally have 3 months to admit liability, I'm sure they will waste this time and rack up more money on the case with site visits etc... to try and wriggle out of it.

It really makes you despair, the last call I made to my insurance company tooks me 5 minutes to get the call centre agent to correctly input my 5 digit vehicle registration mark!

Astaroth

Of cause you do realise that in 80% of cases that "solicitors" who deal with RTA cases are simply fee earners and not qualified solicitors (though there will be one who "oversees" the case). When I worked in PI claims 1/2 our staff were ex fee earners and we had a team of 3 solicitors there for technical support - which most of the ex-"solicitors" said was much more than they ever got in their last job)

The fact that the police are charging someone with a crime doesnt really change things that much after all, it isnt as if the police have never got the wrong person in the past. If they are successfuly prosecuted then (with few exceptions) it obviously does help but most non-injury civil cases will be over long before the criminal case gets to court.

An insurance company will naturally initially take the word of their client as truth (if they didnt there would be hundreds of posts here complaining about it) and it is then up to the other side to prove their client wrong. From what you have said, it sounds like your accident management company has only just sent off the witness statements to the third party insurers... I think it is fairly understandable that they want to get chance to receive and get their clients response to the witness statements rather than simply going against their clients word simply on the basis of their "opponents" phoning and saying they have a statement that fingers their client.

F!nhuner

Astaroth wrote:

From what you have said, it sounds like your accident management company has only just sent off the witness statements to the third party insurers... I think it is fairly understandable that they want to get chance to receive and get their clients response to the witness statements rather than simply going against their clients word simply on the basis of their "opponents" phoning and saying they have a statement that fingers their client.

That's correct, the Accident Management Co (AMC). are just sending them off to the other party's insurance (Admiral).

What the female from AMC said is that Admiral will probably send the witness reports to their insured to get a reply from her. She then went on to say that in her "opinion" the witness statements (both independant of vehicles involved) were clear enough in saying that she was at fault by going through traffic lights whilst they were at red.

If after receiving the statements the other party still claims that the lights were on green the female from AMC stated that Admiral MAY at that point claim liability on behalf of their cliet based on both statements.

Astaroth

Yes, the insurance company has the right to decide their possition on liability without their clients agreement. Obviously (there are posts on this forum complaining about it) this isnt deemed very customer friendly and so insurers may be reluctant to do it in some cases and will go down the route of trying to get their customer to accept it rather than rail roading them in the first instance.