Insurance policy cancelled following claim. In desperate need of legal advice

arcon5

dacouch wrote: »

Techinically if the non disclosure is "Deliberate" / "Fraudulent" the Insurer can retain the entire premium.

I think your missing my point.

If ops actions made the premium £1k for example, if the premium would have otherwise been £1,800, then £800 would be their damages (plus costs) as a result of the false disclosure. Whereas the accident and subsequent third party payouts (for examples sake say £5k) is not the result of the wrongdoing.

I'm saying i'd be surprised if they would be awarded £5k in damages (ie the third party payout) from the policy holder as a result of the actions rather than the £800 extra in the above example (or if paying monthly then the remaining premium due plus the extra).

dacouch

arcon5 wrote: »

I think your missing my point.

If ops actions made the premium £1k for example, if the premium would have otherwise been £1,800, then £800 would be their damages (plus costs) as a result of the false disclosure. Whereas the accident and subsequent third party payouts (for examples sake say £5k) is not the result of the wrongdoing.

I'm saying i'd be surprised if they would be awarded £5k in damages (ie the third party payout) from the policy holder as a result of the actions rather than the £800 extra in the above example (or if paying monthly then the remaining premium due plus the extra).

The above would probably apply if the OP had not deliberately missled the Insurer (Assuming the Insurer would have accepted the OP as a client had the correct information been declared).

In the circumstances the OP has described, an Insurer will normally pay the third party claims including the third parties legal fees and then look to claim the money back.

The Policy wording will almost certainly have a wording for the Insurer to subrogate their outlay from the policyholder.

rs65

dacouch wrote: »

The Policy wording will almost certainly have a wording for the Insurer to subrogate their outlay from the policyholder.

If, under the law of any country, we must make a payment
for which we would not otherwise have been liable, we will
require you to refund the amount paid.

Arcon5, this isn't a case of proving damages.

yani2k9

Hi again guys. Thank you for all the input. I really appreciate all your feedback.

Vaio - Just to clarify, my father has 2 sets of no claims bonus as he's always had more than one vehicles. So nothing dodgy there with the NCB situation. For this policy, my dad was declared as the main driver.

Zenmaster - I can see how the insurance company may interpret it as fronting (although it was never mentioned in any of their correspondence), but it wasn't our intention. The car was to be used by both of us equally but we wanted to utilise my father's NCB.

I think it's important to emphasise that we received the new log book and the policy documents AFTER the accident, so we were unaware of the fact that the car was registered under my name beforehand. We did not do this purposely, and fraud was not our intention.

So what is the general consensus? Will the insurer cover the 3rd party claims, or will they haunt us for years to come?

I spoke to Citizens Advice Bureau this morning, and after explaining the situation to them they said that they're unable to help with this.

Peachyprice - No, that's not what we told the insurer. We explained that the 'new owner' part of the V5 document was filled out by the seller of the vehicle, who mistakenly entered my details for new owner, as I was the one handing over the cash to him. And because the insurance policy documents and the new log book arrived after the accident took place, we were unaware of these discrepancies. Which is all true.

There's no need to refer to us as fraudsters, we didn't intentionally commit a crime. We're just your average family, doing the 9-5 and trying to get by, and I'm pretty confident we have much better moral values in comparison with whoever was in charge of writing Eco Insurance's mission statement.

I've sent a few emails to various solicitors I found online and we're waiting to hear back from them. But does anybody know any good ones that you have previous experience with? And preferably ones that don't charge an absolute fortune? And do you reckon a competent solicitor would be able to achieve any results, considering this complexity of this situation?

Thanks again guys, and I'm sorry that I take so long to respond but I'm unable to use the internet whilst at work so I try to deal with everything when I get home in the evening.

rs65

yani2k9 wrote: »

I paid for the car with my own funds, but ideally wanted to have it registered under my father's name, so he could be the policy holder as he had quite a few years of NCB which made it considerably cheaper.

In hindsight it was obviously a mistake, but due to the negligence of ourselves and the seller, the wrong keeper was recorder on the logbook. And we had no idea until after the accident because that's when the paperwork arrived (logbook and insurance policy).

I think you are missing the point.

You were trying to manipulate the situation to achieve a cheaper premium. That is fronting. You did it intentionally and got it wrong.

Messing up the paperwork just resulted in you getting caught.

dacouch

Personally I would avoid solicitors.

You can make an "Official Complaint" for free to the Insurer which they have to properly investigate and report back to you within eight weeks.

Should you not be happy you can then take it to the Ombudsman who is again free but takes a long time to adjudicate.

The Ombudsman is very consumer friendly and tends to look at whats fair as to what the law or the policy says.

You do not need a solicitor to do either of the above, a solicitor makes money from their hourly fees and court appearances. They will have a natural bias towards generating fees. A solicitor will generally tell you your case is good as they receive their fees whether you win or lose

If you go to the Ombudsman first you still have the option of using a solicitor and going to court (Or not using a solicitor and going to court).

If you do the court route first you cannot use the Ombudsman.

You need to read this http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/46/46_non_disclosure_insurance.htm

Your case will not be classed as "Innocent", there's a remote chance it may be regarded as "inadvertent".

Also have a read of these publish cases from the Ombudsman http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/7/july-innocent-non-disclosure.htm#718 which have similarities to your situation.

Do not be tempted to lie to the Insurers or produce moody documents as they have techniques to discover these.

In my opinion based on the evidence against you they will void the policy and eventually pursue your father for the money they pay out. Your father will need to declare the voided policy (Currently) forever.

Out of interest do you drive the car to work?

boo_star

Having read the FOS judgements, I suspect the OP will be on a hiding to nothing with any complaint/FOS.

bris

yani2k9 wrote: »

So what is the general consensus? Will the insurer cover the 3rd party claims, or will they haunt us for years to come?

The general consensus is they have caught you fronting, it is fronting, no one here will tell you otherwise, it clear this was you intention.

Your insurer will pay out the 3rd party claims, this is their legal obligation and they can't do otherwise.

They will then sue your father as the policy holder and yourself as the driver in a joint claim to recover the third party claims they have paid out, this will be greatly inflated by legal cost and depending on the size of the third party claims could run into tens of thousands very easily.

It's now time to stop posting on here and get some proper legal advice for both yourself and your father.

jumpedtheshark

OP, you might want to ask on the Pepipoo forums for recommendations re solicitors. I'd guess you need an affordable specialist. Here's a link to the forums: http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=5 (maybe ask in the speeding tickets and other offences - as this is a criminal offence - subforum?)

Otherwise, I'd edit out the specifics from your posts here, eg. change the make and model of the car to XXXX, XXXXX so that this is less searchable.

mountainofdebt

Not wishing to kick someone when they're down but won't the OP's father have to admit when applying for future house / motor insurance that he's had insurance cancelled?