Claim against OH by ambulance chasers - fight or not?

HHarry

Unfortunately if your Insurers are involved you don't get to choose whether to defend or not.

I was in a similar situation. Low speed bump on a petrol station forecourt. A year later a claim was put in for injury. I would have like my Insurer to have challenged the claim, but they choose to settle for £2k - which as stated above is probably still cheaper than defending.

It's a rubbish system driven by greedy people. I wish there was an easy solution to weed out the spurious claims.

littlerock

In central London traffic the odd minor cosmetic bump and grind is par for the course. Knocking loose a wing mirror is sadly part of this - it could just as easily happen to my car (and has) when it is parked up and a large vehicle meets another coming towards it and they try to squeeze past each other.

On this occasion my OH and other driver got out, inspected each others cars, OH took some photos, they agreed no damage done apart from wing mirrors, no liability admitted by either side, they exchanged names and addresses (other driver gave company name of mini car hire firm), agreed to get in touch if anything further came to light and then got back in their cars and carried on.

OH said he considers it was entirely the other driver's fault. OH said traffic in front of him was stationary and he indicated to right and started to pull over into a freed up space on his right where traffic had started to move. At this stage other driver came round the bend from behind him and accelerated to get into the space my OH was manouvring into. OH saw him coming and stopped but their wing mirrors banged together. No other damage. OH has photos to prove it and says he would be happy for the local CCTV camera footage to be viewed as he is confident this would prove him right.

But it seems the claim has been submitted to our insurers, (interesting to see who wrote it out as other driver only spoke limited english), and the incident account has escalated very much in other drivers favour. It am not clear how two wing mirrors banging together and no other vehicle contact, would cause whiplash. As I said OH is happy for cctv foootage to be viewed.

It is hard not to think Other Driver has been put up to this, particularly as no attempt has been made to contact OH himself or notify him of potential claim. OH only gave his contact details to the other driver who only give his return as neither considered anything significant at the time. Now it seems he has lawyers on the case to do some sort of online search via an official database to find out our insurers.

OH was outraged by claim, as reported to him by our insurers and says it is not at all what happened and emphatically denied it. Insurer sounded like he believed him but they do not want the aggravation of taking on claims chasers. For which we have to pay via enhanced premiums.

patman99

A quick trip down to the local Police Station to report the other driver for a suspected cas-for-crash claim might be the order of the day.

Also, if your oh wants to get his revenge, get hime to book an appointment with his GP because since the accident he has been suufering with a niggling pain in his kneck.

Once he has done this, he can stick-in a claim against the minicab insurers for the same thing their driver is claiming for off your oh's insurance.

maninthestreet

Has your OH provided his insurers with the photographs he took at the scene of the accident???

Rolandtheroadie

I had a minor bump with a private hire car a couple of years ago whilst in the works van.
The cab company owner arrived and said to the driver "You'll get a wee claim out of this".
It was around £500 to repair the car and £1050 to repair the driver.
It was annoying at the time, but hey ho.
My own thoughts about the whole claiming for non existent injuries, is all insurers should put money into a pot and go after some of the claimants.
I'd think a few well publicised, successful prosecutions would make a lot of people think twice about false claims.

RS2000.

Claims like this will never end until they stop paying out without medical evidence.

OnanTheBarbarian

RS2000. wrote: »

Claims like this will never end until they stop paying out without medical evidence.

Amen to that

merlin68

Dont the insurance company do a medical, when me and my sister claimed compensation the solicitors sent us for a medical, they even filmed my sister before hand.
I just received my medical report which had all my a and e admissions, and all my gp apps back to 2013.
My sister was in a car accident and i had to sue my landlord due to a faulty repair that didnt meet health and safety and caused me an accident, i couldnt stand for about a month.

OnanTheBarbarian

I receive pre-medical offers daily on my client's claims, the insurers can't get enough of it still.

arcon5

Ask the insurer to push for 50:50 liability.
Then as another poster said, see if you can make a tit for tat type claim against the minicabs insurer. Private hire policies are notoriously expensive, the prospect of a claim may well be enough to push a claim away.

Saying that, if the driver is owner driver or something it may work, if he's nothing more than a commission driver then the actual policy holder may just be a garage or something who may or may not have any influence, let alone want involving personally when their insurers can deal with it.