Accident Claims
HAD AN ACCIDENT? NOW, DON'T MAKE IT WORSE!
The following is an extract from the Solicitors Journal, 20th April 2001, on the need for the Government to step in and regulate the claims crooks.
IT IS impossible to walk down any high street without being accosted by young canvassers working for one of the many unlicensed and unregulated claims assessors. Tripped over a paving slab? Cricked your neck whilst working? Had a car accident? Some of the organisations are well run. Others make ambulance chasers look saintly. It is a year since the Blackwell Committee presented its report to the Lord Chancellor. The report provided a menu of action for the Lord Chancellor to draw on should action be needed. Apart from recommending that claimants first of all approach the Community Legal Service, little else has been done in response to the report. Frankly, if solicitors behaved like some claims assessors they would have been struck off ages ago. Solicitors provided a good quality service, albeit usually funded by legal aid. Now there is a free market. Solicitors still have to conform to professional rules of conduct. Claims assessors do not.
Some assessors are simply crooks. Recent cases have involved phantom passengers in car accidents, and even almost a whole street who allegedly were on the same bus involved in an accident. Claims are ratcheted up to include injuries and loss that simply never happened. Minor bumps that would cost a few pounds to repair become total write-offs. The government does not seem concerned, as legal aid is not funding this sort of activity. However, everyone pays by way of increased insurance premiums. Moreover, legitimate claimants now have to overcome inevitable cynicism on the part of paying insurers who, understandably, question almost every claim.
At the other end of the scale there is good anecdotal evidence that some claimants are being forced to settle for less than the amount to which they would have been entitled. Claims assessors need a high volume of relatively quick turnover work to make it pay. They may not have the inclination to do that extra bit of work to get the right result. Some doctors who are contracted to undertake 'independent' medical examinations complain that unless they come up with a good report that favours the claimant, they are simply not used again. Any rear end shunt, however slight, seems automatically to qualify for six months nausea, headaches and time off work.
The government created this mess when it introduced conditional fee agreements and abolished legal aid for most personal injuries. Good quality solicitors now compete with an unregulated industry. Solicitors should not mind competition. The public, however, is entitled to assume that whoever is employed to recover loss will work to the same ethical standards. Professional, well-run claims assessors should also welcome regulations if it roots out the crooks.
In the event that a claimant discovers that a claims assessor has dishonestly or negligently advised him, to whom does he turn for recompense? Another claims assessor or, dare one say, a solicitor.
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