Car insurance - attend court?

poundsinbucks

Basically, few months ago I had an accident, was not my fault. Insurance approved repairs, did not affect NCD. Car was repaired, all fine. Now I have been informed my insurers have not yet received reimbursement of their outlay from the other driver and may take them to court if they do not hear back from them soon. And I have been asked if I would be willing to attend court, should the need arise.

The mention of court worried me, I had assumed the insurers would battle it out between them. Is this standard procedure and most likely won't come to anything and I should just agree to go if need be? Any (constructive ) advice welcome.

Poundsinbucks x

Quentin

Issuing proceedings is often a tactic to concentrate the mind!

If the other side want to call and see it out with a judge then you have nothing to worry about. (Assuming you haven't lied about what happened)

BoracicLint

poundsinbucks wrote: »

Basically, few months ago I had an accident, was not my fault. Insurance approved repairs, did not affect NCD. Car was repaired, all fine. Now I have been informed my insurers have not yet received reimbursement of their outlay from the other driver and may take them to court if they do not hear back from them soon. And I have been asked if I would be willing to attend court, should the need arise.

The mention of court worried me, I had assumed the insurers would battle it out between them. Is this standard procedure and most likely won't come to anything and I should just agree to go if need be? Any (constructive ) advice welcome.

Poundsinbucks x

As far as I understand, your car has been repaired at the third parties expense, and your insurer wants you to sacrifice YOUR time to help them recover THEIR costs.

I would say yes, but only if they agree to pay me a suitable amount for my time.

thenudeone

It's probably a condition of your policy that you will reasonably assist the insurer to recover their costs.

In any case, if they can't recover the costs from the party at fault, you will end up with a "fault claim" on your record.
If they can recover the costs, you have a "claim - costs recovered from third party" on your record, which is much better.

So its in your interests to attend court so they can recover their costs, although it's unlikely to end up there.

ROY47

I had the same letter 12 yrs ago after a chap ran in to the side of my 2hrs old new car !!

He admitted liability etc. gave me all his details, had my car repaired etc.

I had the letter and rang them to ask what it was all about?

Turned out the chap had never reported it to his insurance company !!

My insurance said it was usual to send that letter to both parties "as a way to frighten " the chap into reporting it

He reported it 2 days later !

Luckily for me it was all sorted out

Just_Some_Guy

This is usually about the other guy's insurer not posting a cheque or the other guy not telling his insurer about it. Legal threats are precisely that - threats. Initiating proceedings or receiving a summons is usually enough to hurry things along to a satisfactory conclusion.

What's happened here is that your insurer has paid for the repairs and is having no luck in recouping the cost from the other insurer. A couple of nasty letters should see a cheque being put in the post.

Sgt_Pepper_2

BoracicLint wrote: »

As far as I understand, your car has been repaired at the third parties expense, and your insurer wants you to sacrifice YOUR time to help them recover THEIR costs.

I would say yes, but only if they agree to pay me a suitable amount for my time.

And if they say no, we will just shift the blame onto you?

BoracicLint

Sgt_Pepper wrote: »

And if they say no, we will just shift the blame onto you?

Surely the outcome would still be a 'non-fault' claim, but without the costs being recovered from the third party.

I'm not saying be uncooperative, but a physical presence in court would certainly not be required...assuming the case is clearly the fault of the third party (such as a rear end collision for example)

TSx

BoracicLint wrote: »

Surely the outcome would still be a 'non-fault' claim, but without the costs being recovered from the third party.

I'm not saying be uncooperative, but a physical presence in court would certainly not be required...assuming the case is clearly the fault of the third party (such as a rear end collision for example)

Fault and Non-Fault are misleading terms. A fault claim is where the insurer has been unable to recover it's outlay (could be because it's been stolen, could be because liability has been successfully disputed).

A Non-Fault claim means the insurer has recovered their outlay successfully.