Car insurance claim and solicitors

ODA88

Hi, about a year ago my car was parked in a car park when hit by another driver. We were not present but they came into the cafe and passed on their contact details for insurance claim. My insurer arranged the repairs as expected - I didn't pay out any costs directly for this.

I heard nothing further but I have now been contacted by solicitors appointed by my insurer to claim the money for the repairs via the county court. They have asked me to sign a legal agreement with them directly and will seek a CCJ on the debt.  The letter says that in certain circumstances I may be liable for legal costs (repair was circa £2.5k). It doesn't explain what those circumstances would be.

I have checked the insurance policy as unclear why it is me being named as the claimant rather than the insurance company. The only reference I can find is a line that say I am expected to help them with any claim.

I don't understand why I need to be involved in this at all and wondered if anyone can explain,  is this a legal obligation and what happens if I don't sign up with the solicitor they've appointed?

thanks

Mark_d

The solicitors may need your support to claim against the the person that hit your car.  This is standard and is a condition of your insurance.  If you don't want to support the recovery of the damages from the party that hit your car, your insurance could consider the claim cancelled and therefore you would need to pay the £2500 for the repair of your car

DullGreyGuy

ODA88 said:

Hi, about a year ago my car was parked in a car park when hit by another driver. We were not present but they came into the cafe and passed on their contact details for insurance claim. My insurer arranged the repairs as expected - I didn't pay out any costs directly for this.

I heard nothing further but I have now been contacted by solicitors appointed by my insurer to claim the money for the repairs via the county court. They have asked me to sign a legal agreement with them directly and will seek a CCJ on the debt.  The letter says that in certain circumstances I may be liable for legal costs (repair was circa £2.5k). It doesn't explain what those circumstances would be.

I have checked the insurance policy as unclear why it is me being named as the claimant rather than the insurance company. The only reference I can find is a line that say I am expected to help them with any claim.

I don't understand why I need to be involved in this at all and wondered if anyone can explain,  is this a legal obligation and what happens if I don't sign up with the solicitor they've appointed?

You are the claimant and so it's standard for it to be you -v- the other driver even if the insurers are the ones doing all the work/funding the action etc. 

Normally you'd only become liable for the costs if you do something highly unreasonable like agree to attend, confirm the date of the court date and then simply not turn up on the day for no good reason or you turn up buy say actually your witness statement was all a lie and actually you were high on coke when you hit their car for a laugh. 

In practice very few cases actually make it to court if there are no injuries and no expensive credit hire. 

Aretnap

ODA88 said:

I have checked the insurance policy as unclear why it is me being named as the claimant rather than the insurance company. The only reference I can find is a line that say I am expected to help them with any claim.

I don't understand why I need to be involved in this at all and wondered if anyone can explain,  is this a legal obligation and what happens if I don't sign up with the solicitor they've appointed?

You need to be involved because you're the one who was harmed by the accident (or at least your property was harmed), so you're the only person who can take the other driver (or his insurer) to court. Your insurer can't take him to court themselves unless they are claiming that it was their property that he damaged.

So under the terms of your insurance policy you agree to assist them in pursuing the at fault party for costs - which in practice means taking the at fault party to court in your name. Of course the vast majority of the actual work around the court claim is done by your insurer, or the solicitors they appoint, however your name does have to be on the claim form, and there is some admin work that your insurer can't do for you, like signing some of the forms.

If you don't agree then you'd be in breach of the terms of your contract with the insurer and in theory they could require you to pay back the cost of the repairs. And even if they didn't do that, they would probably record the accident as a fault claim which would affect your no claims bonus and make getting insurance more expensive for the next few years (in insurance jargon a fault claim is one where your insurer is unable to recover their costs from the other party for whatever reason, not necessarily because you were to blame for the accident.)