Being paid back legal fees

Stephy1990

Hi all, I was wondering if any of you have had experience of this.

I won't go into details but basically I put in a no win no fee whiplash claim over 2 years ago. I was hounded by the firm day in day out until I agreed to go ahead with the claim.
Anyway months later after the legal firm had agreed to take it on, and I had gone to a medical exam etc they then decided that they couldn't fulfill the claim as my car insurance company had dealt with me at the time of the accident.

Anyway they decided to pull my claim earlier this year and said I was liable for legal fees. I then got a letter demanding that I pay the legal fees in full within 14 days or they will send bailiffs round. The amount nearly wiped out all of my savings (basically my deposit for a house was gone) but I paid it to get them off my back.

Now nearly 3 months after I paid them I looked at my bank account on monday and the money had gone back in from the solicitors. The whole full amount!

Now I have had no letter/phone call/email or anything about why this money is back. I don't really want to contact them as they caused me so much stress and upset. Can they take it back from me? Or has anybody else experienced this?


(I don't want to disclose the company but they have had poor ombudsmen reports and I am no where near legally qualified, but some of the practices and their contracts were 'dodgy' according to some good friends who are also solicitors. And I don't really want to explain all the ins and outs as quite frankly I don't understand it all and I tried to forget about it)

Thanks in advance for any responses.

OnanTheBarbarian

All you can do here is contact the firm and query the return of the amount, otherwise you don't know if you can keep it or not.

Essentially you messed them about by running a claim for injury when it had already been dealt with previously, so it sounds like you have attempted to claim twice for the same accident. So they would be entitled to pursue you if you have breached the terms of the CFA

Your_Hero

If it is no win no fee, why did you even pay them? Just ignore their request.

To be honest, they probably realised they shouldn't have taken your money and probably had quite a lot of complaints held up by the Ombudsman that they decided to settle your incident before they had to pay out more in compensation. These no win, no fee firms are a real issue that the government was looking into and banning.

Keep the money.

nobbysn*ts

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

All you can do here is contact the firm and query the return of the amount, otherwise you don't know if you can keep it or not.

Essentially you messed them about by running a claim for injury when it had already been dealt with previously, so it sounds like you have attempted to claim twice for the same accident. So they would be entitled to pursue you if you have breached the terms of the CFA

It sounds far more like the 'no win no fee' pressurised the op into agreeing to let them make a claim, realised the op had already representation, so demanded money with menaces. They then realised they could face a lawsuit themselves, probably for at least misrepresentation and harassment, so very quickly returned the money and hoped the op would let the matter drop. There could be more in it for the op to pursue the company, if they mention the harassment. The threat of bailiffs, without any court order is very similar to the Wonga case, and the massive amount they had to pat back. I'd be pushing for a fair amount off them, for the stress. The op should expect a nice bonus.