Car accident claim help

lloydyd

Hi all, I was involved in a crash back in Feb. The other driver admitted that it was his fault and i was assigned a solicitor (HCC) from my insurer and went with it.

I have had months of physio for my injury and there has been no dispute of blame by the other party.

I have had to take several half and 1/4 days off work to attend the various appointments (the latest possible appointments were always sought) with the physio and as a contractor for a major bank, i have lost a lot of money for the time taken off. I have to bill them in terms of days not hours.

The physio that i was assigned could not always offer me the latest appointment due to everyone wanting that (I assume for the same reason i did, to avoid further time off work). My solicitor has just sent me the below.....

In respect of your loss of earnings, I can confirm that I cannot guarantee that the Defendant Insurers will consider your loss of earnings, as they may argue why you have taken half a day for an half an hour appointment and whilst you did not arrange for the appointments for early morning or late evening.

TBH im really cross about this. I have always informed her that i have to take time off. I have provided my timesheets, end of year accounts, tax records and invoices from me to the bank to back this up and now she says this. The time i have taken is purely a result of the injury i sustained and I have told her to confer with the physio to confirm that there would have been (in some cases) a 2 or 3 week gap in between my appointments if i had waited for those "last of the day appointments" and this would have resulted in more pain and discomfort for me and would have been detremental to my recovery.

I dont really know what im asking you guys tbh, I just wanted to hear from any "experts" or just anyone who has been through something similar.

The monies involved amount to 6 or 7 times the amount of the actual injury claim, and im really worried, i wont get paid out for the time i have HAD to take off due to this accident, which has been admitted by the 3rd party, was not my fault and i was completely blameless.

Thanks
L

InsideInsurance

Are you sure YOU had a loss of earnings? Do you go via an umbrella or operate your own service company/ Ltd? If Ltd do you take everything out as salary or the norm of a low salary and dividends?

It sounds like you are being dealt with by a typical factory type solicitor firm who are set up to deal with volume not complexity.

It is a stock letter and not really a concern until you hear back from the TPI. I would be more concerned about if you or your company is actually the one that suffered the direct loss.

Assuming you personally are paid as a sole trader directly by the bank then I would look at your contract, if you say you bill by the day then you should have been paid in full for all of those days as you evidently did some work on them. My own contract does half day billing so 1 minute to 4 hours work and I get half a days pay, 4 hours and 1 minute or more and I get one days pay.

If you operate via a Ltd and give yourself a tiny salary then it is only your loss of the tiny salary that you can claim as loss of earnings. The company itself is the one that has made the big loss and that is too remote to be able to be claimed. You are indirectly hit by the reduced dividends but that is a natural risk of being a shareholder in a company.

lloydyd

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Are you sure YOU had a loss of earnings? Do you go via an umbrella or operate your own service company/ Ltd? If Ltd do you take everything out as salary or the norm of a low salary and dividends?

It sounds like you are being dealt with by a typical factory type solicitor firm who are set up to deal with volume not complexity.

It is a stock letter and not really a concern until you hear back from the TPI. I would be more concerned about if you or your company is actually the one that suffered the direct loss.

Assuming you personally are paid as a sole trader directly by the bank then I would look at your contract, if you say you bill by the day then you should have been paid in full for all of those days as you evidently did some work on them. My own contract does half day billing so 1 minute to 4 hours work and I get half a days pay, 4 hours and 1 minute or more and I get one days pay.

If you operate via a Ltd and give yourself a tiny salary then it is only your loss of the tiny salary that you can claim as loss of earnings. The company itself is the one that has made the big loss and that is too remote to be able to be claimed. You are indirectly hit by the reduced dividends but that is a natural risk of being a shareholder in a company.

Thanks for the reply. I do take all of my salary as salary not dividend as this is my first contract role and i havent been in a position to not get paid.

My contract doesnt seem like yours and is subject to my time sheets from the banks agency.

For example, i can bill them in full days, half and quarter days. So EG, I get in at 8 and if i leave at 4pm that is a full day.

The time i have taken as 1/4 days are when i have left at 2pm to get to my physio by 5pm (it takes around 2 hours from Southwark, to Welwyn). I could of course leave at 3pm to achieve this, but as I had to take a 1/4 day regardless there isnt any difference in the end result of time off.

I havent really had to take many 1/2 days as i always tired to ensure i had the latest possible appointment at the physio without having to wait weeks to be seen (as both the physio and myself felt that would have been detremental to my recovery).

I have offered my solicitor a letter signed by my manager which will state that the time ive had off is a direct result of the accident.

Im just worried that they are going to do everything they can to get out of paying me what i feel im owed. The bottom line is (or should be), if the other driver hadnt smashed into me, i wouldnt have had to take time off work to see a physio.

InsideInsurance

lloydyd wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I do take all of my salary as salary not dividend as this is my first contract role and i havent been in a position to not get paid.

My contract doesnt seem like yours and is subject to my time sheets from the banks agency.

So you are operating via your own Ltd?

Do your payslips from your company to you show the reduced hours/ salary?

Even for a first time contractor I dont understand why you'd be paying yourself it all as salary thus increasing your tax liability but still.

My contract is also dependent on timesheets as this confirms what hours were done but when that is converted to an invoice it is based on half days with everything rounding up. From what you say your contract is based on quarter days rather than full days as your initial post said.

As a general warning, given the joys of IR35, you need to get your terminology more inline with being a contractor. So you will be getting a letter from a manager at your clients. "Your manager" suggests you are an employee which you arent if you are a contractor.

lloydyd

InsideInsurance wrote: »

So you are operating via your own Ltd?

Do your payslips from your company to you show the reduced hours/ salary?

Even for a first time contractor I dont understand why you'd be paying yourself it all as salary thus increasing your tax liability but still.

My contract is also dependent on timesheets as this confirms what hours were done but when that is converted to an invoice it is based on half days with everything rounding up. From what you say your contract is based on quarter days rather than full days as your initial post said.

As a general warning, given the joys of IR35, you need to get your terminology more inline with being a contractor. So you will be getting a letter from a manager at your clients. "Your manager" suggests you are an employee which you arent if you are a contractor.

Salary Vs dividend is a good convo, but one we could have outside of this :-) and yes you are right i have increased my tax but not by that much. I do take a dividend but its taken monthly rather than 1/4 or anually (which is what i should have said to start with.

Re my terminology, again you are correct. Yes i operate through my own ltd, i do have a manger at the bank (she manages me and the project I work on) which is why ive called her that.

I am def not an employee but the contract isnt directly with the bank. I get paid by the banks retained agents, who in turn get paid by the bank. Its overly and unecessaily complicated, but there you go.

I havent ever received a wage slip from my accountant alhtough i believe they hold them online and will have to look later as i cant access from work, I have invoices and i have a remmitance (which only shows the total days worked wthin a month) it wont show any time off.

As i have taken the divdends on a monthly basis (I still class it as a wage even though its not) will this make my claim more difficult to prove?

lloydyd

To add, the remitance will obviously be lower on the months i have had time off, but it wont show detail like which days ive had off. My authorised timesheets (which i have given to my solicitor) obviously will show that level of detail, which is why ive offer a letter from a manager at my clients offices (better? :-)) confirming that the time taken on my timesheets is a result of the accident and to attend physio appointments and such....

InsideInsurance

lloydyd wrote: »

I do take a dividend but its taken monthly rather than 1/4 or anually (which is what i should have said to start with.

<snip>

I am def not an employee but the contract isnt directly with the bank. I get paid by the banks retained agents, who in turn get paid by the bank. Its overly and unecessaily complicated, but there you go.

I havent ever received a wage slip from my accountant alhtough i believe they hold them online and will have to look later as i cant access from work, I have invoices and i have a remmitance (which only shows the total days worked wthin a month) it wont show any time off.

As i have taken the divdends on a monthly basis (I still class it as a wage even though its not) will this make my claim more difficult to prove?

Yes, this will make things more difficult, dividends, no matter how frequently you take it, is not salary.

You will lose salary because you were unable to work, you lose dividends because your company doesnt make as much profit. Now the company makes less profit because you cannot work as much but that is generally considered too remote to be able to claim.

Of cause you can only claim for loss of salary if you actually do lose it, ie you reduce you salary for the hours lost for those months. If you pay yourself your full salary for those months then you havent lost any salary.

In a similar vein, if you were a normal employee and had received sick pay for being off work your employer couldnt have claimed that money back, nor their lost revenues, from the TP because the company isnt closely enough connected to the accident.

This is all the strictest application of "the law" and in reality we are talking case law not statute and so things are very grey. You may get an inexperienced/ generous TP claims handler who accepts it all without questioning and get paid in full. You may get someone like me who had been round the block a few times and will fight to ensure only what is due is paid.


As to being paid via the agency, that is normal for the vast majority of contractors.

lloydyd

I guess if i wanted to take this further, then i could argue that although its dividend there is a stark contrast to whats been paid into my account from my ltd on those months that ive taken time off and this is due directly from injury sustained.

I sincerely hope i get someone who will not question it as i have suffered a genuine injury and have also suffered a genuine payment gap. thanks for all of your advice. I will see what happens next i guess.

InsideInsurance

Unfortunately the courts allow for very short causal chains to stop the courts being flooded. If this were not the case then you could get many court cases from each accident because of each of the shareholders of each company impacted all suing for loss of dividends. So if you partner/ parents/ friend were a minority shareholder in your Ltd then by your theory they also could sue as they also would have lost dividends.


Contracting is a good thing, know many people that have done very well out of it, but it isnt without risks and you can lose out when things are based on salary and don't consider dividends

bris

This gravy train is all but over, you better have a dam good case because the courts are now on to bogus insurance claims, and ambulance chasers.

If you can't prove your lost earnings which doesn't look like you can, you might even get looked at for a fraudulent claim.