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The Times
October 29 1996

 

Claims assessors accused of exploiting accident victims

BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT

ACCIDENT victims are the target of a new breed of "claims negotiator" who settle lucrative claims with insurance companies for large American-style contingency fees.

In some cases, the negotiators or assessors go into hospital wards touting for claims and persuade patients to sign over permission to handle the case. Bryan Neill, a partner with Prince Evans, a firm of solicitors in Uxbridge, west London, said: "We have experienced claims assessors going so far as to walk into spinal injury units and approach patients. In one case, when the patient said she wasn't interested, he pestered the person in the next bed and asked about to see if anyone else had had an accident."

The claims assessors ­ who can operate outside the rules that govern solicitors doing "no win, no fee" work ­ have alarmed the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. Today they are raising their concerns with Gary Streeter, junior minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department, and beginning a poster and leaflet campaign. Caroline Harmer, the association's president, said: "We are very concerned that accident victims, often as they lie in hospital or even in an ambulance, are prey to the unscrupulous."

The lawyers say that the claims assessors ­ who may not be legally qualified ­ are unregulated and unaccredited and are using hard-sell marketing techniques that exploit the vulnerable. They advertise in hospitals, even in ambulances, and pick up cases from insurance brokers, police or welfare agencies.

Those claims assessors who are not lawyers have no power to take cases to court or issue proceedings. The danger, the lawyers maintain, is that the settlements agreed may fall short of what the accident victims should obtain.

The firms advertise their work on a no win, no fee basis and, typically, take one third or more of damages recouped. Solicitors can double their fees in no win, no fee cases. But their "uplift" in fees should not be more than 25 per cent of the damages awarded to the victim.

A spokeswoman for the personal injury lawyers' association said the firms could not arrange legal aid "and they cannot take aggressive insurers to court; they are more interested in the rates of commission for themselves than in the levels of damages for the victims". One Sunderland man agreed to give 30 per cent of his damages in a contingency fee agreement with a claims assessor. He subsequently discovered that he qualified for legal aid.

But the claims assessors accuse solicitors of whingeing because they are losing a share of their market and failing to use modern marketing to promote their services.

Claims Direct of Bournemouth ­ not the same as Claims Direct, which promotes personal injuries work on behalf of a national network of solicitors ­ is one of the firms under attack by the lawyers. Nicholas Leigh, the managing director, said: "We use the same awards guidelines as do solicitors and are hardly likely to undersettle when we have a direct interest in the size of the settlement."

There was nothing wrong, he said, with making people aware of their rights and enabling them to bring a claim, adding that his firm did not approach patients in hospital. He said that solicitors sometimes ended up being paid both by the insurers and the victim.

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