Personal Injury Claim help

MrOneLung

In August last year, my wife had a car accident involving a bus at a roundabout.
It was designated her fault in insurance claim, and everything was settled with insurance company, and no charges were brought against her by police etc.

Yesterday, she received a County Court Money Claim letter for damages from one of the bus passengers to 'recover damages in excess of £1,500.00 but not exceeding £3,000.00 including a claim for pain, suffering and a loss of amenity in excess of £1,000.00'

Is this something that we forward onto the car insurance company to handle or is this for us to respond to using our own solicitors etc and is totally separate to our car insurance ?

Additionally, we changed our car insurance company when the insurance was next renewed, so does this have a baring on how we should proceed ?

Any advice gratefully received.

HandG

Ambulance chasers and subsequent "whiplash" claims are the scourge of the insurance world and encourage people to basically be dishonest. This sounds like a perfect case in point.

You are right insofar as your first port of call should be the car insurance provider at the time of the accident but their involvement will depend on the level of your coverage and whether third party liability is covered. I'm not 100% but most comprehensive policies should include this. Also the fact you changed insurers will not make any difference, the loss occurred whilst you were covered by the previous firm and, as long as it is a risk covered within the terms of your old policy, they are bound to honour the claim.

Hopefully it all works out okay for you.

MrOneLung

thanks - looks like that is my lunch hour booked out !!!

cafcfan

HandG said:

Ambulance chasers and subsequent "whiplash" claims are the scourge of the insurance world and encourage people to basically be dishonest. This sounds like a perfect case in point.

You are right insofar as your first port of call should be the car insurance provider at the time of the accident but their involvement will depend on the level of your coverage and whether third party liability is covered. I'm not 100% but most comprehensive policies should include this. Also the fact you changed insurers will not make any difference, the loss occurred whilst you were covered by the previous firm and, as long as it is a risk covered within the terms of your old policy, they are bound to honour the claim.

Hopefully it all works out okay for you.

Indeed. In fact any old third party, fire and theft policy would do the trick, as demonstrated by the name.

This should not be your problem - that's why you buy insurance.

The only word of caution is that it is possible that your insurers have already declined the injury claim which may be why the "injured party" is coming after you. Check with your erstwhile insurers and then just pass it on to them. BUT KEEP ON TOP OF WHAT THE INSURANCE COMPANY ARE DOING WITH IT AS YOU DON'T WANT TO END UP WITH A CCJ.

Hopefully the insurers will just cough up but, in a way of course, if they had the stamina and the balls it would be good to fight the claim. While your wife might have been responsible for the accident, it was actually the bus company that would have caused the alleged injuries by failing to provide seat belts in their vehicle and/or allowing standing passengers. Neither of which can be safe by any definition.

MrOneLung

Thanks for advice - spoke to old insurance company, they are aware of this claim and are handling it. No action required from ourselves (confirmed on a recorded line !!!).

there was no reference on court documents to advise this had already been sent to the insurance company or any claim reference/policy number etc quoted which is what caused our concern.

thanks again.

LuckyReds

cafcfan said:

HandG said:

Ambulance chasers and subsequent "whiplash" claims are the scourge of the insurance world and encourage people to basically be dishonest. This sounds like a perfect case in point.

You are right insofar as your first port of call should be the car insurance provider at the time of the accident but their involvement will depend on the level of your coverage and whether third party liability is covered. I'm not 100% but most comprehensive policies should include this. Also the fact you changed insurers will not make any difference, the loss occurred whilst you were covered by the previous firm and, as long as it is a risk covered within the terms of your old policy, they are bound to honour the claim.

Hopefully it all works out okay for you.

Indeed. In fact any old third party, fire and theft policy would do the trick, as demonstrated by the name.

This should not be your problem - that's why you buy insurance.

The only word of caution is that it is possible that your insurers have already declined the injury claim which may be why the "injured party" is coming after you. Check with your erstwhile insurers and then just pass it on to them. BUT KEEP ON TOP OF WHAT THE INSURANCE COMPANY ARE DOING WITH IT AS YOU DON'T WANT TO END UP WITH A CCJ.

Hopefully the insurers will just cough up but, in a way of course, if they had the stamina and the balls it would be good to fight the claim. While your wife might have been responsible for the accident, it was actually the bus company that would have caused the alleged injuries by failing to provide seat belts in their vehicle and/or allowing standing passengers. Neither of which can be safe by any definition.

I was going to say; surely any injury sustained inside the bus is an issue for the bus company, as they've failed to provide adequate protection for their customers?

I understand that it was determined to be MrOneLung's wife who was at fault for the accident itself, and arguably for any subsequent damage, but from a neutral (and woefully uninformed - I don't even drive!) point of view there must be a limit to the extent of her responsibility? i.e if I kicked a football and it smashed a window, whilst I'm guilty of causing damage to the window, surely I wouldn't be responsible for the homeowner standing on a piece of glass 2 days later as they failed to clean it up?

MrOneLung said:

Thanks for advice - spoke to old insurance company, they are aware of this claim and are handling it. No action required from ourselves (confirmed on a recorded line !!!).

there was no reference on court documents to advise this had already been sent to the insurance company or any claim reference/policy number etc quoted which is what caused our concern.

thanks again.

Sorry to hear about what's going on, mate. I can imagine it was a pretty crappy letter to open, and needless aggro to keep an eye on too.

A bit surprising that there was nothing documenting your insurance companies involvement on the court docs, or even a courtesy call from your insurance company informing you that they had it under control though.