Foreign Lorry driver Car Crash Legal Question

wolvesfc999999

Back in June 2019 I was hit on the M25 by a Foreign lorry driver. The Lorry driver was a lovely guy and admitted his fault straight away.

Because of how long the claim was likely to take to sort, I was advised to carry out the repairs myself with a view to using Admiral Law to pursue the claim on my behalf.

The third party's insurance agent admitted fault in October 2019. I supplied all of the costs of the repairs and hire car costs to Admiral Law to recover. 

To this date, it has still not been resolved. There is no excuse or reason for this offered or implied.

To top it all off Admiral Law are now telling me that the third party's insurance agent is being unresponsive and, following Brexit there is no possibility to take the action to court.

Its not a huge amount of money but its enough and over the past year its been financially a struggle at times.

I don't know which way to turn or how to proceed and would welcome any feedback or advice?

Sandtree

Did you not have comprehensive insurance or were the repairs not much more than your excess?

Claims against overseas vehicles is always painfully slow. The UK representative doesn't necessarily have any delegated authority at all and so you end up with a middleman just passing messages with translations and occasionally their recommendation. In my experience many of the companies chosen seem a bit of odd one and not once has it been a large organisation. Add covid on top and I'm not surprised by your timescales.

I don't know what your advisors are going on about no possibility of court action... the courts are operating but just are slower than normal but the longer you wait the bigger the queue in front of you. Add to that the fact that court papers are always good to focus the mind.

Assuming your claim is under £10,000 and you weren't injured then your advisors may be more worried about the fact that they don't get paid for going to court so may be trying to discourage you trying to go down that route.

wolvesfc999999

Thanks for the response.
I decided to get the repairs done myself rather than claim on Admirals advice. I also didnt want it to affect my insurance in the future.

Admiral Law are claiming that they cannot raise court proceedings due to Brexit and that the courts aren't proceeding with cases. They stated that they would raise a case last June but have dragged it on so long now.

So i'm assuming from your response that brexit really isn't a reason?

MovingForwards

The UK handling agents for the foreign TPI need authority to instruct solicitors to accept court proceedings on behalf of the TP. Without that you need to issue court proceedings, but then have them served on the TP.

Brexit is nothing to do with it, it's down to you / your solicitor to serve the papers in a foreign country. 

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