Help needed with claim and court notice

DD265

Somebody is making a bogus claim on my insurance.

Despite my (ex) insurance company supposedly dealing with it, myself and my father (the registered keeper of the car, but not the insured party and not even in the vehicle at the time of the collision) have received several letters from a solicitors which can only be described as threatening and which are clearly attempting to intimidate us.

Last week the letter demanded my father's insurance details within 7 days and he rang them and basically told them where to go and threatened them with legal action if they continued to harass him, given that my insurance company are already in communication about this. I did receive a letter from my IC today stating they'd decided to go 50/50 on the fault because they'd just received the medical report. I'm not going to go into what a sham I think this is.

Today I received a claim form from a county court. The claims dept at the insurance company are only open during my working hours, I get 30mins for lunch and every call to them I'm usually on hold for at least 10. I know that I need to speak to them and I'm going to have to skip lunch tomorrow to do it, but in the mean time I'm worried.

Does anybody know whether I will need to respond directly to the court papers? We were categorically told by my insurance company not to communicate to the solicitors or anybody regarding this matter but the papers require that a response within 7 days.

dogbot

Send the court papers immediatly by recorded delivery to your insurer with a covering note including your claim reference number. They will nominate a solicitor and get things moving. Do try and phone them to let them know as they may be able to provide a fax number.

How is this a bogus claim? You say there was a collision? If there was a collision, and you were at fault, then they may well be injured. Certainly the third party should not be contacting you directly if they have been in contact with you insurer.

suburbanwifey

I repeat what the poster above me has said. How is this a bogus claim? you admit in your post that there has been a collision. If the other parties solicitors have instructed medical evidence, then there is injury involved and thus a claim.

Quentin

DD265 wrote: »

Does anybody know whether I will need to respond directly to the court papers? We were categorically told by my insurance company not to communicate to the solicitors or anybody regarding this matter but the papers require that a response within 7 days.

As already has been advised, you should pass these papers on to your insurer to deal with, and not reply to them.

But are you sure that these are "court" papers? You say you only have 7 days in which to reply, but all county court claims give the defendant a minimum of 14 days in which to respond.

DD265

Thanks for your help. I spoke to the insurance company before reading all this and they said the same about sending the documents to them so I am doing it tomorrow.

As for my feelings about the claim being dodgy, it's a long story but suffice to say they've been uncooperative, they have lied and their solicitors have been highly unprofessional from the offset. Unfortunately I feel like I'm backed up against a brick wall because it's my word against theirs, I didn't take appropriate action immediately after the accident (getting all the details, which they didn't give, calling the police, an officer even stopped but just asked why I'd pulled onto the pavement then drove right off, didn't even offer to help) but I went straight into shock and having no experience of anything like this before, wasn't thinking at all.

Lesson learnt and I now have a form to record the details in my car should anything happen again, but I'm still stuck with this.

As for the papers - they're from a county court and they say "claim form" on them. They do include response papers which would allow an additional 14 days to prepare a defense, but the papers themselves require a response within 7 days.