ATE insurance

annegler

Im confused! I am making a clinical negligence claim via no win no fee and it states that i may need ATE insurance, which may be on my house insurance. Luckily i do have legal protection on my house insurance but said they wont cover just the ATE aspect, but instead to go through them for the whole claim? My concern is that i might go down that route and they wont take it on (if its not over the 50% probable success rate).

huckster

You would need to provide more info about the claim for people to comment on this. Otherwise they are guessing.

Based on no info, i would say Home Insurance legal cover is a waste of time, unless you have a clear legal opinion in writing about your case. If the chances of success are assessed at 50/50, then i cannot see your Home Insurers legal people looking to cover thousands in legal costs.

I think you should look around for a local Solicitors that deals with such claims and go through all of the funding arrangements, plus look at chances of success. Quite often with no win no fee, the Solicitors will take a chunk of any win, possibly 25%. You might have to pay for medical expert reports. If you have no funds, then this might be your only option. If you have funds, then some firm of fixed fee arrangement may be better.

annegler

Apologies The solicitor that is prepared to take on the case says i have a good change of success and is on a no win no fee basis, but suggest we have ATE insurance, at a cost, "unless you have house insurance etc with Legal protection cover" and if so to send proof. In other words they have deemed my case to be over the 51% chance of success.

I do have such cover via my house insurance, but when i contacted them they said they only provide that cover if THEY take on the case, and to do that, I would have to submit a claim to them, so that they can pass on to one of their insurers ... I guess, to see if their is of the same opinion and being over 51%? Thats why im confused. Why cant they take the word of the solicitors i have found and just provide the ATE insurance?

Quentin

Why would they take your no win no fee solicitors word.

Seems like if they did he would be in a win win deal as he couldn't lose out at all.

With your house insurer having to take on all the risk!

annegler

Thanks Questin. That does make sense now!

huckster

Quentin wrote: »

Why would they take your no win no fee solicitors word.

Seems like if they did he would be in a win win deal as he couldn't lose out at all.

With your house insurer having to take on all the risk!

Agree with this.

Do you trust this Solicitor ? How experienced are they with medical negligence claims ? Are they actually a qualified Solicitor, noted by the Law Society as specialist in dealing with such claims. Some large legal companies employ legal executives, who are not actually qualified Solicitors.

I personally would have doubts, given that they are looking for a win win situation for themselves. Also a decent Solicitor should know how Home Insurance legal expenses works.

You could send copies of your paperwork to the Insurers to see whether they can pursue the claim. They might have a panel of Solicitors they use for these type of claims. It depends on how quickly you need to register any court claim. You may not get a quick decision from the Insurers.

OnanTheBarbarian

So much bad advice or misunderstandings on this thread.

The OP Solicitor feels there are reasonable prospects and they are willing to act on a NWNF basis, but this will result in the solicitor having to deduct a "success fee" from the compensation. In addition, it is often preferred to have some backup in the form of legal cover in place to deal with payment of disbursements as well as any opponent's legal fees that may be awarded if you failed to beat a part 36 offer.

The solicitor has correctly advised the client that rather than incurring a premium of several hundred pounds for an ATE product, to check if there is any Before The Event legal cover (BTE) such as home legal protection, which may cover fees for such a claim.

As is ever the case though, when the customer approaches the legal cover people, they insist that their own solicitors are used rather than a firm of the choosing of the client. This is so that a) they can earn a kickback from the law firm they push you onto and b) they can control the costs by agreeing to either pay a really low hourly rate to their pet solicitor or pay them nothing.

SO the OP needs to decide if they continue with the firm they already approached to act but then need to take out an ATE policy, or go with the firm the legal cover will want to push them onto. If the legal cover firm are used though, there should be no deduction taken from the compensation assuming there is a full & proper policy in place.

Quentin

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

So much bad advice or misunderstandings on this thread.....
.

Where?


You look to have misunderstood.


(eg There's no mention of the BTE cover you "advise" us that the solicitor is wanting anywhere in the OP's posts!)


The question asked in the OP was:

Why cant they take the word of the solicitors i have found and just provide the ATE insurance?

OnanTheBarbarian

The OP mentions BTE "home legal cover" in the original post Quentin.

The whole reason the OP's Solicitor will have told them to get in touch with home insurer / Legal Expense Insurer is to check on the existence of any LEI cover and to see if they will indemnify, thus negating the need to take out ATE cover.

A Why cant they take the word of the solicitors i have found and just provide the ATE insurance?

Because

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

As is ever the case though, when the customer approaches the legal cover people, they insist that their own solicitors are used rather than a firm of the choosing of the client. This is so that a) they can earn a kickback from the law firm they push you onto and b) they can control the costs by agreeing to either pay a really low hourly rate to their pet solicitor or pay them nothing.

annegler

@Onan, this is exactly what I was meaning . They (legal protection via house insurance) have advised there is a date of incident and date of knowledge. The date of knowledge falls within the time ive had insurance with them. The date of incident is prior to my taking cover with them and therfore told they would not be able to cover me if they calculated it from that date. With this in mind i am inclined to think it may be more trouble than its worth to go down that route as they may try to argue on the dates and therfore if i am covered or not - in the case of a claim.