Warning over motor insurance strike-out proposals
Plans to give courts new powers to strike out motor insurance cases with “phantom passengers” and “fundamentally dishonest claims” have been condemned by personal injury lawyers.
According to a fact sheet accompanying the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, cl 45 provides that where the claimant is entitled to damages but the court is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the claimant has been “fundamentally dishonest” in relation to the claim as a whole then it must dismiss the entire claim, except where the claimant would suffer “substantial injustice” as a result.The court would also be required to record the damages award that would have been made but for the dishonesty, and to award costs against the claimant not exceeding that award.
Legal consultant Nicholas Bevan says: “Here we go again, a government determined to shoot from the hip and legislate over issues it does not understand, this time at the behest of the commercial interests of insurers and without a shred of any independently corroborated evidence to substantiate the insurers’ claims that fraud is increasing.”
A spokesman for the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers says: “To introduce the power for blanket dismissal in this way will lead to three things: an increase in spurious allegations of fraud and exaggeration by insurers; an increase in satellite litigation, and an increase in the number of genuine claimants who either underplay their symptoms or who fail to bring valid cases at all, for fear of being falsely accused.
“If it can be proved to a criminal standard that an entire claim is fraudulent, there is no doubt that it should be thrown out...The law is rarely black and white, which is why the courts already have the power to use discretion to deal with alleged exaggeration.”
