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Solicitors to run checks on compensation claim history

From June 2015 any solicitor who wants to conduct a personal injury compensation claim on behalf of a client is required to check a database for entries about the client concerning the client’s claims history if any. This is only if the claim is worth £25,000 or less – which means the vast majority of personal injury cases.

No such checks are required in any other kind of case – only personal injury cases. Why only such cases? No real explanation has been provided.

Insurance companies are mainly responsible for paying out compensation payments to injured claimants. These payments are made on behalf of employers and car drivers and others against whom compensation claims are brought.

For many years such insurance companies have kept detailed databases of people who have brought claims in the past so that if you have ever made a claim it is highly likely that your details will feature on such databases.

Now all parties to any particular claim – claimant/his or her solicitor/insurance company/defendant/court/other interested parties or bodies – will be made aware of the claims history of any particular claimant.

The inference drawn by insurance companies in cases where an allegedly injured person has already conducted a compensation claim in the past is that such a person is more likely to be lying about his or her claim or exaggerating the extent of any injuries alleged than someone who has never before made such a claim.

The clear view of insurance companies is that you can get injured once and that is probably just about okay but if you get injured 2 or more times then it follows as night follows day that there is something dodgy about you.

If there is any OTHER reason why insurance companies are so keen on looking at claimant personal histories in this way it hasn’t been divulged – at least not to this blogger.

So insurance companies for a long time have shared information with each other and sometimes with claimants or their solicitors about what they know about claims histories.

What is new is that the Government has now ruled that we as Claimant representatives have to take steps which amount really to checking up on the credibility of our clients. No check – no claim. This is pretty radical. Whilst lawyers have always been obliged to ensure they don’t act on the basis of dishonest instructions from clients and whilst it is obvious we cannot get involved knowingly in any sort of fraudulent or other criminal behaviour the new rule means that we are being required to deal from the outset of the case with our client as though he or she may be a liar. Nobody asks us to do that if a client comes to us wanting to write a will or draft a commercial contract or do a house conveyance.

Has the Government lost its sense of proportion over personal injury claims? And what does this new rule do to the trust that is supposed to be the foundation of the lawyer/client relationship? And why should injured people have to submit to being investigated in this way before they can even start a legitimate claim to be compensated for the negligence of someone who has injured them?


Blog by Adrian Dalton, Head of Personal Injury

 

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