Car Insurance claim

SteveW75

My wife works in a nursing home, she parked in the staff/visitor car park, as usual, for her shift. There is a large dead tree in the car park and part of the top fell off, damaging the A pillar and front passenger door. The owners had people in recently to remove dangerous trees in the back garden but nothing at the front (car park) was touched. 
Are the owners libel?
Do I contact my insurance or try going directly through their public liability insurance?
If I go through my insurance, it will affect my premiums, irrespective of fault, won't it?
Many thanks in advance. Steve.

Sandtree

If you can prove they were negligent then you can claim off the owners of the tree. 

As you are talking Public Liability, this is an insurance that is there to protect them not you and its their choice alone if they decide to deal with the matter themselves or pass it on to someone else to deal with (such as their insurers, brokers or a claims management company). You cannot force them to use the PL cover if they dont want to.

You can claim off your insurance in the first instance and they will then attempt a recovery from the tree owners if they think there are reasonable prospects of success. If they get their money back it gets marked as a non-fault claim but if they dont its a fault claim.

Fault claims universally impact premiums, a single non-fault claim may or may not depending on the insurer and other factors. However, it is an "incident" anyway and therefore has to be declared when you are getting quotes (inc your renewal) and the impact of an unclaimed for incident is broadly in line with a claimed for non-fault claim with most insurers (though obviously everyone sets their own pricing logic so there are variations).

[Deleted User]

If going through your insurance will affect your premiums regardless of fault, then it'll affect them equally when you notify them, so you may as well use them.

jimbo6977

Suing ones own employer is an "interesting" course of action. 

Sandtree

jimbo6977 said:

Suing ones own employer is an "interesting" course of action. 

Will vary by employer but I think most will be sympathetic if they knew there was a problem with a tree and just hadnt gotten around to do something about it... that sympathy may dissipate  if it comes with a £5k credit hire bill or such