Compensation

[RickST]

And if it happens to a working class lad who loves his family but can't afford insurance?

**** happens and all that as well is it?

I'm afraid in my opinion yes.

Edit: although I do see your argument in that particular circumstance. My issue is more to do with people claiming to ease a suffering that money doesn't help with. I could easily see making a claim to cover expenses relating to the accident. including the paying of a mortgage, the value of the payout isn't important. What I wouldn't accept is seeing a payout because my widow and 2 children are sad.

 

[Swifty55]

And if it happens to a working class lad who loves his family but can't afford insurance?

**** happens and all that as well is it?

Yes, it's life. No one can really say anything unless it actually happens to them. Anyone can be hypothetical...

 

[Raymond Lin]

I'm afraid in my opinion yes.

It's not really fair. Kudos to you for getting on with it.

Sucks to be your children though should you forget to get insurance or the insurance company comes back with some small print about "not covered"!

 

[RickST]

It's not really fair. Kudos to you for getting on with it.

Sucks to be your children though should you forget to get insurance or the insurance company comes back with some small print about "not covered"!

that's true they might, in which case i should have chosen a better policy


also i did edit my post up there ^^^ to concede a bit

 

[cheets64]

Now I know why my car insurance has gone up £6 extra a month, despite me not crashing EVER in 10 years and having 7 years NCB

 

[Swifty55]

Now I know why my car insurance has gone up £6 extra a month, despite me not crashing EVER in 10 years and having 7 years NCB

Premiums will just keep going up and up tbh.

 

[nydryl]

Sorry to hear about your mum.

Personally I'd only want her claiming for what she has to. Taxis, any loss of earnings, physio etc. I don't agree with claiming 'just for the injury' unless it has significant and prolonged impact on lifestyle...but I'm sure someone will tell me why I'm wrong.

 

[RickST]

Now I know why my car insurance has gone up £6 extra a month, despite me not crashing EVER in 10 years and having 7 years NCB

talk to that jakesnake guy, i bet its the government trying to do something about liberties or something

 

[cheets64]

Premiums will just keep going up and up tbh.

Friend had 3 people in his car, got hit from behind all claimed compo for "whiplash" each got over £1.5k. None of them had whiplash, they all told me and boasted about what they would spend the £1.5k on.

Makes me sick.

 

[Raymond Lin]

I'm afraid it does, because of how PI works, nowadays.

It's easy to quantify some things (loss of earnings, cost of taxis to work, costs to remedy damage to [most] property, etc), but it's the unquantifiable stuff which people perceive as being things which are abused which leads to third parties questioning the honesty of the claim.

Can it be proven that someone's suffering from whiplash or not, if they wander down to the doctors and say it hurts a bit, after looking up the symptoms on Wikipedia? No, it's not, if we're being honest. Therein lies the problem - the way the system can be, and is, abused.

The word you are looking for "unquantifiable stuff" is call General Damages. The quantifiable stuff is "Special Damages".

As to what you can or cannot claim in General Damages. The JSB Guideline would have the brackets for that.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Broken leg = not many people can dispute. The legitimacy is pretty much a given.

"Whiplash" = too open to abuse, at least in the eyes of the public. The legitimacy is being questioned more and more.

I wasn't talking about whiplash claim.

Personally, my opinion is that if the Claimant has a report from a Doctor that states he has whiplash. Who am I (without a medical degree) to disagree?

 

[Raymond Lin]

But I was! . I wasn't talking about the obvious, self-evident injuries... as they're obvious and self-evident!

You can't disagree, and that's part of the problem. It's too easy to fake that kind of injury, and with the prevalence of no win no fee, people are jumping on that bandwagon, pretending they have injuries when they might not. Anyone on here could go to the doctor tomorrow and make it up, couldn't they? That means people lose faith in the legal system, when it comes to such matters.

I've never done any PI, so I don't know the stats about how the number of such injuries has varied over time, though.

I do see the problem of these false claims and I see why people would lose faith in it. Hell, there are departments to tackle these claims so it is not like all these false claims are paid.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Why has a thread about getting knocked over by a car and a broken wrist descended into fantasy scenarios of people dying of cancer?

What an utterly pointless comparison

Because the poster said it is an accident, you should grow up, forget it and get on with your life.
Negligence is negligence so I asked if he would just get on with his life if a Clinician accidentally read his medical records wrong and he ended up dying.
He has answered that he would forget it
And if you think that is a fantasy scenario then I have a lot of fantasy scenario's on my desk.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

But, as you said, how can you argue against a doctor's note?

Are all claims for whiplash, which have that basic medical evidence, paid out? (Basically speaking, of course).

Lets go into this in a bit more detail because I sometimes get a letter from an Insurance firm/Solicitor asking for records on an accident and I will pass them on to Ministries which is another department in the hospital.
So lets pretend it is a whiplash case:
The Insurance company/Solicitor will have consent from the Claimant for all their medical records including Xrays & Casualty Cards from the accident and will have to fork out £50 for them.
So in their hands they will now have all records and not just a GPs note so therefore it isn't basic mediical evidence.
Our Ministries department get over 5000 requests a year

 

[Rich_L]

It depends on where you get your information from, insurers like to think that whiplash is actually a made-up injury entirely, whereas PI lawyers will contend that everyone is just a whiplash-injury waiting to happen

 

[SexyGreyFox]

All this stuff, none of which objectively proves whiplash, right? A broken leg's obvious, but whiplash just boils down to a patient saying it hurts in x, y and z way, with the doctor going, "yep, sounds like whiplash", no? I don't know anything about medicine/whiplash, but that's my impression.

Obviously whiplash exists, along with a myriad of things which deserve compensation - I'm not disputing that - I'm just talking about false claims which make people rage about compensation in general.

I'm not a clinician so I can't answer your question about mythical whiplash injuries but the Insurers/Solicitors won't be armed with basic information like a GP's note (of course all the notes may not show anything).

 

[Raymond Lin]

Haha, well yes. And when Ray's colleagues can hang around in a hospital and give a leaflet to someone saying, "hi, do you have a pain in your back? You don't? Even if it's worth £5k?... Oh, it hurts now? Oh dear, je suis dévasté, let me help you with your troubles", it makes it a farcical situation.

FIY, I am on the other side "Ambulance chasers" are the enemy.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

But there's no other evidence either way, so that's basically what they're going off, no?

I understand you're saying they get all the relevant paperwork... but if none of that says anything about whiplash, it's basically the doctor's note that has the final say, in the absence of anything else...

You missed my edit:
(of course all the notes may not show anything).

This is where the Insurers v Solicitors play a game of 'Do I want to go to court or would it be cheaper to pay out/accept whats on offer'.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

We're not disagreeing, I'm just saying it's an unsatisfactory situation .

I don't know the answer to this but do Insurers just payout for whiplash cases with a note from a GP?
The only whiplash case I know is my best mate who is here (the tall one) - http://www.disturbinthepeace.co.uk/mp3/15.jpg
He got hit from behind about 5 years ago and his life totally changed.
He is one of the best guitarists I've played with and now he can't pick a guitar up for more than 5 minutes.
He's ballooned up because of drugs and he walks with 2 walking sticks.
He also has 5 degrees and 2 Masters in Nursing but can't get a job because of his injuries.
It took 4 years before the Insurers finally decided he had whiplash and it had caused substantial injuries including a very serious neurological disorder called GBS.

 

[subbytna]

Claims/Claimants....wrecking society since 1990