Accident in work vehicle, will it go to court?

StevenB12

Hey everyone

About 4 weeks ago I  had a minor vehicle crash in a works van. No damage to the van, and a small dent in the car bumper.
Long story short, the car driver was in the wrong lane on the round about, ended up in the side of the van, exchanged details and on we went. Naturally she has claimed against the company I work for as she is now claiming it was my fault. I have drawn pictures and took photos of the incident.., this got moved on to an independent inspector to look at who has now written up a word document with the facts from my side etc.

The damage on her car is disputed as it looked old, not fresh, something the insurance also noticed on the pictures without this being mentioned. By the by, do you think there is much chance this will end up in court? It was an old car (03 plate) I believe, and I'm only assuming that if it was written off due to age, the costs would have been relatively low.
Do you think this will end up being settled out of court?

Thanks 

chrisw

I doubt it will go to court. In the absence of any independent witnesses and to keep costs down I would think it will probably go 50/50.

Incidentally, you should declare this accident to your own private car insurer as well.

Sandtree

If the damage is less than £10,000 (assuming no injuries) then going to court means the parties have to carry their own legal costs. Whilst you and I may go to the "small claims court" and choose to represent ourselves insurance companies clearly use solicitors/barristers which bill by the hour. Its therefore very rare for these kinds of cases to go to court because the legal fees eat too deeply into any winnings and so better to negotiate a position out of court than line the pockets of lawyers.

MovingForwards

Sandtree said:

If the damage is less than £10,000 (assuming no injuries) then going to court means the parties have to carry their own legal costs. Whilst you and I may go to the "small claims court" and choose to represent ourselves insurance companies clearly use solicitors/barristers which bill by the hour. Its therefore very rare for these kinds of cases to go to court because the legal fees eat too deeply into any winnings and so better to negotiate a position out of court than line the pockets of lawyers.

Insurance companies have panel solicitors. It's tenders which go out to get the contracts when the insurer are looking for new firms when the contract is expiring.

The solicitor firms make the money from the 'big' cases (fast track / multi track) and do the little ones (small claims) to keep their insurer client happy. Fixed recoverable costs are allowed for small claims court cases. 

The money made through litigation doesn't line the fee earners pocket, they are on a salary like most other jobs and are not as well paid as you think, some even get a bonus if they meet their target which is usually enough to pay for a budget holiday or car repair bills.

To answer OPs question, a lot depends on whether settlement can be agreed between both sides, if both are adamant they want 100% and the insurance company think they can get 50% + back by having proceedings issued, potentially going to court if the issuing of proceedings doesn't force the others hand, then that's what they will look to do, but only if you agree to it. You were the one who had the accident and are the only one who can say what happened.

As a side note, 'court' isn't like the criminal ones on TV, it's just a room (judge's chambers), with tables. The judge sits at one end, you sit to one side, the third party side the other side. Both say what happened, the judge asks questions if anything needs clarification, then makes a decision.

Sandtree

MovingForwards said:

Sandtree said:

If the damage is less than £10,000 (assuming no injuries) then going to court means the parties have to carry their own legal costs. Whilst you and I may go to the "small claims court" and choose to represent ourselves insurance companies clearly use solicitors/barristers which bill by the hour. Its therefore very rare for these kinds of cases to go to court because the legal fees eat too deeply into any winnings and so better to negotiate a position out of court than line the pockets of lawyers.

Insurance companies have panel solicitors. It's tenders which go out to get the contracts when the insurer are looking for new firms when the contract is expiring.

The solicitor firms make the money from the 'big' cases (fast track / multi track) and do the little ones (small claims) to keep their insurer client happy. Fixed recoverable costs are allowed for small claims court cases. 

The money made through litigation doesn't line the fee earners pocket, they are on a salary like most other jobs and are not as well paid as you think, some even get a bonus if they meet their target which is usually enough to pay for a budget holiday or car repair bills.

Sort of...

In my day at least, which I admit was a while ago, panel solicitors indeed did buy postcode sectors based on the anticipated claims volumes for a fixed fee. They were then required to take all anticipated LE claims from that postcode sector which included the lucrative Multi-Track, the ok Fast-Track and often loss making Small-Track.

If there was no LE claim from our insured, our insured didnt have LE or if it was a PH fault claim but dispute on quantum etc then for us at least these werent managed fee free by the panel... a moderate amount were dealt with in house by the Litigation team and the rest were to panel for fees.

In theory they could have been farmed out to panel but when tendering the sectors if you advise them that they must deal with all of the cases where they get no/minimal payment from the third party (and thats only if they win) then clearly they will pay less for each postcode sector. Clearly those at my employers had decided it was commercially better not to include these cases and so there was a direct consideration of cost of recovery -v- prospects -v- amount to be recovered

MovingForwards

It's a bit different with law firms now, from when you worked in insurance. The insurance company has a law firm or two, that law firm may have several insurers and not just the 'sister' insurer company either, who they work for.

If the claim isn't resolved in-house by the insurer, it goes off to the solicitors. Quantum is always dealt with by the insurer as they have their own panel engineers, liability by the solicitors. There's only so long an insurance company can hold off an irate customer after an accident and not getting it resolved, especially when LEI is part of the policy.

Of course, a commercial decision can be made by the insurer to refund the excess, reinstate the NCB and close the claim as a non-fault one.

Commercial insurance is different, due to the size of their excess. With them they tend to have accident management companies and again solicitors firms do tenders to get that business too.

None of this really helps OP.

Sandtree

Oh, I still work in insurance, just not dealt with panel solicitor relationships for a good few years.

Maybe you are thinking of a single insurer's approach rather than the universal approach by the industry? Quantum disputes are much more common in PSLA, LoE etc than property damage which wouldn't normally go to any engineers, panel or otherwise. Similarly customer's being irate really depends on the circs, if like the OP's situation where they have sustained no losses its fairly rare for them to significantly care until renewal comes around and the open claim adversely impacts NCD/Premiums.

I know we would go against out insured's wishes, so in the OP situation if we couldn't get the TP to accept liability we would suggest parties carry their own losses but if the TP push to issue we would then offer 50/50 as it wouldn't be worth the panel solicitors fees for handling it (if there was injury it may have gone to Litigation instead but whilst we are then talking "salaries" so arguably sunk cost again the size of team is reflective of the volume of claims they have to handle). In my day Aviva had taken a new stance of never going against their insured's wishes and so they were the TPI we litigated against most often.

Unfortunately my case load was full of narrow lane collisions, roundabouts etc as I dealt with disputed liability and fast track cases... as long as the TPI wasnt Aviva we rarely issued on liability.

declandarp

In many cases, a car accident case does not have to go to court. When you hire a car accident lawyer, they will get to work investigating and gathering evidence to demonstrate your damages. Both parties can't agree on who was at fault for the car accident.