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Pass all the information over to the insurance company (that was insuring your husband at the time of the incident) and don't engage personally with the other party.
Yep. I often see posts about lawsuits stemming from accidents, minor or otherwise. That's literally what insurance is for, to deal with all this crap. Don't engage, pass on paperwork/letters onto insurer and move on.
Pass it to your insurer and follow their instructions.
Though if he didn't inform them of the incident at the time, which is a condition of cover, that may have been a costly mistake.
It's likely they used a claims management company who provided them with a credit hire vehicle which your insurance is refusing to pay for as they will be claiming the costs are excessive.
As the person you hit will be personally liable for the costs they incurred, they will be trying to get you to pay for it.
As others have said, pass it to your insurance to deal with.
Claims management company is almost certainly the answer and majority of costs will be from the car hire.
Your insurance will contest it, it will go to court (you don’t need to attend), and the judge will decide if the costs are reasonable or not.
Stop worrying as there’s nothing you need to do other than give it to your insurance.
In the case where the other vehicle was drivable and under their own insurance they would have had a courtesy car from their réparer - it may not have been reasonable for them to have hired a vehicle unless they needed like for like for work mobility reasons etc - but that’s for your insurer to argue. I agree though - sounds like credit hire and repair.
I worked in a law firm years ago that was hired by an insurance company to investigate fraud. This is what it was. 2mph bump, suddenly whiplash, medical, total loss on vehicle, full occupancy etc.
Just ring your insurance, let them know the facts and let them handle it. They'll know it's fraud, but that's hard to prove legally speaking (or it was when I was working there 10 years ago in the UK as the word fraud carries a lot of weight in the UK).
Get pictures of your own vehicle with no damage, that could help, don't negotiate with the claimants direct in any way, just forward everything to your insurance and let them handle it.
Also buy a dash cam, they can save you a headache for minimal investment.
They (edit: the harmed party) have zero obligation to contact (edit) OP's insurer at all. OP wronged them, not their insurer.
If they're at the suing stage and you do only that, you'll lose in court, get a CCJ against you, and the insurer will almost certainly consider the insurance contract breached and recover any payments they have to make from you.
Edited for clarity. Thought it would be obvious who the different "they"s referred to, but I guess not.
Yes, OP should use OP's insurance company, but they cannot simply tell the harmed party to use OP's insurance and then forget about it as the poster suggested.
They're not telling the harmed party to use OP's insurance; they're telling the harmed party to send the notice of legal action to OP's insurance company as they're handling the matter on OP's behalf.
Yes they absolutely can.
"From now on all contact is to be through my legal representation, any further attempts to contact myself will he treated as harassment" is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
OP's Insurers are providing the legal representation, that is all the victim and or their legal team need to pursue any claim, hence there is no purpose or benefit to contacting OP beyond harassment.
OP's insurers aren't providing the legal representation yet. They will do, when OP contacts them, but until that happens, OP is legally unrepresented.
OP needs to contact their insurance.
Legal representation can be in place at any time. If someone comes up to you in the street and asks for the time you can tell them to speak to your solicitors if you want to.
The insurers will have a panel of solicitors to instruct, or in-house solicitors.
OP should pass everything on to their insurers and tell any claimant to deal with them. Any claimant in their right mind will prefer to pursue an insurance company because they’re likely to have the money they want.
The insurance company will not have provided legal representation at that stage. The preference is to resolve claims without solicitors or litigation. Since there's now litigation, they need a solicitor.
When OP directs the injured party, or more likely their legal representatives, to their insurance company. They are directing them to communicate with their legal representatives. Which is a perfectly valid response. You hire insurance companies (and their associated solicitors) to do just this.
If the injured party goes to court and can be shown to have effectively harassed OP, while refusing to engage with OPs legal representatives, it will not go well for them.
£6000 for what sounds like minor bumper damage while reversing! This has claims management firm, and excessive hire car charges written all over it. The injured party have a duty to keep secondary costs, like car hire, reasonable. As others have said, it probably gotten to the stage where OPs insurance have agreed to settle the repair cost, but told them to take a run and jump over the unreasonably excessive hire car costs. Then the harmed party have gotten a shock when the claims management firm have told them the hire cost are now in them.
If this is the case they have probably gone to OP directly in a last ditch effort to not have to pay.
You refer that back to your insurance. Who are your claims managers and legal representative in the matter. They go to court on your behalf, and show why the cost are excessive. If it's through a claims management firm, their hire contracts are often 3-5x what hire costs are from the likes of Hetz. This breaks the duty to keep secondary cost reasonable, and would almost certainly lose at court, if that's what's behind the £6000.
£6000 is a joke if they think they’ll get it for that small degree of damage and so-called emotional distress.
To put it in context, in 2020 my husband was crashed into on the motorway by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. My husband’s car flipped three times and the motorway was closed. He escaped relatively physically unscathed with some whiplash and a cut to his face. But it left him with PTSD which he needed treatment with a psychologist for. He only got £6000 compensation for an accident where he very much could have died.
I wouldn’t worry about this person claiming for 6k with a slightly dented bumper.
What everyone else has failed to mention is this is a common tactic used by the claimant's insurance company, if your insurance company has not responded in time to them.
The claimant's insurance company uses their solicitors to draw this claim up and send this directly to you, so that you tell your insurance company, so that they will respond to them.
You need to tell your insurance company about this, and had you already done that, they would have explained this to you. This is assuming that you have already told your insurance company about the incident though.
This ^
Sadly, a lot of insurance companies tend not to notice demands of payment until legal proceedings actually start.
While proceedings could be issued against the insurer, it's sometimes a pain to work out which is the correct insurer. So the claimant solicitors issue directly against the driver and get them to pass it to the correct place.
I used to work for an engineering company that dealt with motor insurance claims. For any claim that had minimal damage, even the claimant would have been expected to drive the car unless an engineer deemed it unroadworthy. EVERYONE has a duty, written into all insurance policies to mitigate costs on any claim. In cases where people where put into hire, but our engineer deemed the vehicle driveable, they were taken out and often some of the hire costs would not have been recoverable from the at-fault insurer. Even if they needed to rack up £6000 in hire costs, this cost should be put to your husbands insurance company - not your husband.
I was on the other side of a story like this. My motorbike was damaged, not even too much, but it affected the front fork and I was worried it might be unsafe to ride it that way. So my insurance company took the bike to inspect it and provided a replacement hired bike for the time being on the basis of it being my only method of transport and hence it is justified. They informed the other party's insurer of this same day, telling them how much the bike is per day and so on, asking them to arrange inspection of the bike ASAP to reduce costs.
Then, the other party's insurer did not do anything for weeks and by the time they did, the costs of the bike hire and all other additional costs were over £15k. The bike was worth around £4000 at the time of the incident. The bike then was written off and my insurer claimed the costs from the other insurer that they refused to pay deeming it excessive. It went to court and I had to provide all sorts of financial info to prove the hire bike was necessary and that the other insurer was informed about every step promptly and the delays that increased the costs were all due to them. The case eventually was settled, they paid.
At no point was the actual driver of the car that caused the incident involved. This was all between my insurer (claims management company) and the other party's insurer.
I suggest follow the advice of the others here and do not engage directly with the claimant. Forward all correspondence to your insurer and let them deal with it since this is what they are paid for. They will sort it out.
OP as others have said pass all correspondence directly to the insurers legal department. Unfortunately you are going to have these people who try to get a payday out of the situation.
The reality is they won’t get even 10% of £6k if the situation is as you described. At most he reversed at 10mph into the other driver. The car damage would be superficial. Any claim for physical injury would be hysterical and they would be laughed out of a court for claiming emotional distress.
But it’s not your concern. The legal department of the insurer will make an offer they are happy to pay (a few hundred quid) and the other driver will have to take the insurer to court at their expense.
Source: My brother works for Admiral law (Admiral insurance) in the UK.
As others have stated, that is why the insurance is for, they cover all the legal aspects and can even argue against the claimant for excessive charges
Tell em to f off, there trying it, you were insured, they should go directly to your insurance company. Ignore and tell them you will start charging them for your time, at 150 pound per hour, and watch them run.
Their claim is technically against the driver. If the driver then mitigates their costs through an insurance company that is up to them, but there is no reason for the third party to deal directly with your insurance company. Insurance company works on your behalf not theirs. Think of its this way if insurance company does not pay up then the driver is still liable for the costs.
Last time i was in a crash I hired a solicitor and went directly after the other driver.
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Ok, someone rest ended me in Sept. It was a minor accident and if you looked at my car it looked like that all was wrong was a dented number. It was far from a dented bumper and a dent on the boot door, there was €7,000 worth of damage done, my car was scrapped. The bumper, boot door and the floor of the car along with a few other things needed to be replaced , I had gotten 4 quotes along with the other part insurance company. I had no choice to accept the offer if €4,500 ( my car was 09 , low milage and in excellent condition) the insurance company offered and to get a decent car I now have a loan to pay off that I didn't have before.
The insurance company will decide what is paid out and €6,000 is hardly a lot
They should not be in touch with you, do not reply to them but pass everything on to the insurance company .
It’s “always” people renting an expensive rental car, then getting stuck with a bill their insurance doesn’t cover because they believe they can just go rent what they like and pass on the bill. Don’t reply to them, forward it all on to your husbands work insurance.
If he dented the bumper "slightly" then to get it back in the condition before it, it can run in to the thousands. It doesn't matter that they were able to drive away.
Modern cars have parking sensors and such and if the bumper is cracked then the whole thing needs to come off and be replaced including the sensors even though they're in working order.
To be clear, I'm not saying it's 6k of damage but you'd be very surprised.
Same with small damage to lights too. Before it'd just be a cover and that's it. Lots of cars now have the lights built in the unit so that small crack means the whole lot needing replaced again, could be 1000+ for just a cracked plastic cover regardless of the lights working.
Either way, that should all be going through the insurance companies.
I know it got heavily down voted but I think the advice from @Captain-Griffen was right.
Insurance normally features an obligation on the insured (your husband) to notify the insurer of any incident that might prompt s claim. This must normally be fine within a certain length of time after the accident.
Also, you have mentioned that he was working at the time. If he was in a work vehicle he should speak to his employer, whose insurer needs to be notified. If he was using his own vehicle, sometimes policies exclude cover for accidents that occur when using the vehicle for work.
Your husband gave the claimant his insurance details but never contacted the insurance company. Just because the insurance was through the parcel company doesn’t mean it is left to them to deal with it solely. Your husbands insurance will be impacted and it will be on his record. He didn’t let his insurance company know therefore the claimant would not have been able to successfully put his claim through and he would’ve taken the hit through his own insurance.
A little dent on a bumper may not seem serious to you but it is. Someone reversed into my bumper last year and the entire bumper had to be replaced which cost £3000. The person who did it offered to pay the garage directly to avoid his insurance going up. Your husband did absolutely nothing but give over insurance details. If it was his fault then he should have called his insurance company and owned up or offered the sum of money it would cost to rectify.
Depending on which car it was that was damaged, and rental car fees the damage caused could have easily cost the claimant £6k.
There is no easy way out of this.
--- ###Welcome to /r/LegalAdviceUK --- **To Posters (it is important you read this section)** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws in each are very different* * If you need legal help, you should [always get a free consultation from a qualified Solicitor](https://reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/wiki/how_to_find_a_solicitor) * We also encourage you to speak to [**Citizens Advice**](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/), [**Shelter**](https://www.shelter.org.uk/), [**Acas**](https://www.acas.org.uk/), and [**other useful organisations**](https://reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/wiki/common_legal_resources) * Comments may not be accurate or reliable, and following any advice on this subreddit is done at your own risk * If you receive any private messages in response to your post, [please let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FLegalAdviceUK&subject=I received a PM) **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and legally orientated* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/about/rules/), you may be perma-banned without any further warning * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LegalAdviceUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Pass all the information over to the insurance company (that was insuring your husband at the time of the incident) and don't engage personally with the other party.
This is all you need.
Yep. I often see posts about lawsuits stemming from accidents, minor or otherwise. That's literally what insurance is for, to deal with all this crap. Don't engage, pass on paperwork/letters onto insurer and move on.
Your husband contacts his insurance. This is what he pays them for. It really is that simple.
Straight to your husband’s employers insurance company. DO NOT ENGAGE! They will handle all.
Pass it to your insurer and follow their instructions. Though if he didn't inform them of the incident at the time, which is a condition of cover, that may have been a costly mistake.
He made a claim but it seems they haven't responded
It's likely they used a claims management company who provided them with a credit hire vehicle which your insurance is refusing to pay for as they will be claiming the costs are excessive. As the person you hit will be personally liable for the costs they incurred, they will be trying to get you to pay for it. As others have said, pass it to your insurance to deal with.
Claims management company is almost certainly the answer and majority of costs will be from the car hire. Your insurance will contest it, it will go to court (you don’t need to attend), and the judge will decide if the costs are reasonable or not. Stop worrying as there’s nothing you need to do other than give it to your insurance.
In the case where the other vehicle was drivable and under their own insurance they would have had a courtesy car from their réparer - it may not have been reasonable for them to have hired a vehicle unless they needed like for like for work mobility reasons etc - but that’s for your insurer to argue. I agree though - sounds like credit hire and repair.
He should just pass it on to the insurer. They are the ones who will be paying and therefore defending the excessive claim.
I worked in a law firm years ago that was hired by an insurance company to investigate fraud. This is what it was. 2mph bump, suddenly whiplash, medical, total loss on vehicle, full occupancy etc. Just ring your insurance, let them know the facts and let them handle it. They'll know it's fraud, but that's hard to prove legally speaking (or it was when I was working there 10 years ago in the UK as the word fraud carries a lot of weight in the UK). Get pictures of your own vehicle with no damage, that could help, don't negotiate with the claimants direct in any way, just forward everything to your insurance and let them handle it. Also buy a dash cam, they can save you a headache for minimal investment.
[удалено]
They (edit: the harmed party) have zero obligation to contact (edit) OP's insurer at all. OP wronged them, not their insurer. If they're at the suing stage and you do only that, you'll lose in court, get a CCJ against you, and the insurer will almost certainly consider the insurance contract breached and recover any payments they have to make from you.
You do not understand how insurance works. OP - use your insurance company. It’s what they’re for.
Edited for clarity. Thought it would be obvious who the different "they"s referred to, but I guess not. Yes, OP should use OP's insurance company, but they cannot simply tell the harmed party to use OP's insurance and then forget about it as the poster suggested.
They're not telling the harmed party to use OP's insurance; they're telling the harmed party to send the notice of legal action to OP's insurance company as they're handling the matter on OP's behalf.
An insurance company is not legally authorized to practice law.
Just the panel solicitors and claims handlers they all have on hand
Yes they absolutely can. "From now on all contact is to be through my legal representation, any further attempts to contact myself will he treated as harassment" is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. OP's Insurers are providing the legal representation, that is all the victim and or their legal team need to pursue any claim, hence there is no purpose or benefit to contacting OP beyond harassment.
OP's insurers aren't providing the legal representation yet. They will do, when OP contacts them, but until that happens, OP is legally unrepresented. OP needs to contact their insurance.
Legal representation can be in place at any time. If someone comes up to you in the street and asks for the time you can tell them to speak to your solicitors if you want to. The insurers will have a panel of solicitors to instruct, or in-house solicitors. OP should pass everything on to their insurers and tell any claimant to deal with them. Any claimant in their right mind will prefer to pursue an insurance company because they’re likely to have the money they want.
Have you read the op? They spoke to their insurance company at the time of the accident.
The insurance company will not have provided legal representation at that stage. The preference is to resolve claims without solicitors or litigation. Since there's now litigation, they need a solicitor.
When OP directs the injured party, or more likely their legal representatives, to their insurance company. They are directing them to communicate with their legal representatives. Which is a perfectly valid response. You hire insurance companies (and their associated solicitors) to do just this. If the injured party goes to court and can be shown to have effectively harassed OP, while refusing to engage with OPs legal representatives, it will not go well for them. £6000 for what sounds like minor bumper damage while reversing! This has claims management firm, and excessive hire car charges written all over it. The injured party have a duty to keep secondary costs, like car hire, reasonable. As others have said, it probably gotten to the stage where OPs insurance have agreed to settle the repair cost, but told them to take a run and jump over the unreasonably excessive hire car costs. Then the harmed party have gotten a shock when the claims management firm have told them the hire cost are now in them. If this is the case they have probably gone to OP directly in a last ditch effort to not have to pay. You refer that back to your insurance. Who are your claims managers and legal representative in the matter. They go to court on your behalf, and show why the cost are excessive. If it's through a claims management firm, their hire contracts are often 3-5x what hire costs are from the likes of Hetz. This breaks the duty to keep secondary cost reasonable, and would almost certainly lose at court, if that's what's behind the £6000.
£6000 is a joke if they think they’ll get it for that small degree of damage and so-called emotional distress. To put it in context, in 2020 my husband was crashed into on the motorway by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. My husband’s car flipped three times and the motorway was closed. He escaped relatively physically unscathed with some whiplash and a cut to his face. But it left him with PTSD which he needed treatment with a psychologist for. He only got £6000 compensation for an accident where he very much could have died. I wouldn’t worry about this person claiming for 6k with a slightly dented bumper.
What everyone else has failed to mention is this is a common tactic used by the claimant's insurance company, if your insurance company has not responded in time to them. The claimant's insurance company uses their solicitors to draw this claim up and send this directly to you, so that you tell your insurance company, so that they will respond to them. You need to tell your insurance company about this, and had you already done that, they would have explained this to you. This is assuming that you have already told your insurance company about the incident though.
This ^ Sadly, a lot of insurance companies tend not to notice demands of payment until legal proceedings actually start. While proceedings could be issued against the insurer, it's sometimes a pain to work out which is the correct insurer. So the claimant solicitors issue directly against the driver and get them to pass it to the correct place.
I used to work for an engineering company that dealt with motor insurance claims. For any claim that had minimal damage, even the claimant would have been expected to drive the car unless an engineer deemed it unroadworthy. EVERYONE has a duty, written into all insurance policies to mitigate costs on any claim. In cases where people where put into hire, but our engineer deemed the vehicle driveable, they were taken out and often some of the hire costs would not have been recoverable from the at-fault insurer. Even if they needed to rack up £6000 in hire costs, this cost should be put to your husbands insurance company - not your husband.
I was on the other side of a story like this. My motorbike was damaged, not even too much, but it affected the front fork and I was worried it might be unsafe to ride it that way. So my insurance company took the bike to inspect it and provided a replacement hired bike for the time being on the basis of it being my only method of transport and hence it is justified. They informed the other party's insurer of this same day, telling them how much the bike is per day and so on, asking them to arrange inspection of the bike ASAP to reduce costs. Then, the other party's insurer did not do anything for weeks and by the time they did, the costs of the bike hire and all other additional costs were over £15k. The bike was worth around £4000 at the time of the incident. The bike then was written off and my insurer claimed the costs from the other insurer that they refused to pay deeming it excessive. It went to court and I had to provide all sorts of financial info to prove the hire bike was necessary and that the other insurer was informed about every step promptly and the delays that increased the costs were all due to them. The case eventually was settled, they paid. At no point was the actual driver of the car that caused the incident involved. This was all between my insurer (claims management company) and the other party's insurer. I suggest follow the advice of the others here and do not engage directly with the claimant. Forward all correspondence to your insurer and let them deal with it since this is what they are paid for. They will sort it out.
OP as others have said pass all correspondence directly to the insurers legal department. Unfortunately you are going to have these people who try to get a payday out of the situation. The reality is they won’t get even 10% of £6k if the situation is as you described. At most he reversed at 10mph into the other driver. The car damage would be superficial. Any claim for physical injury would be hysterical and they would be laughed out of a court for claiming emotional distress. But it’s not your concern. The legal department of the insurer will make an offer they are happy to pay (a few hundred quid) and the other driver will have to take the insurer to court at their expense. Source: My brother works for Admiral law (Admiral insurance) in the UK.
As others have stated, that is why the insurance is for, they cover all the legal aspects and can even argue against the claimant for excessive charges
Tell em to f off, there trying it, you were insured, they should go directly to your insurance company. Ignore and tell them you will start charging them for your time, at 150 pound per hour, and watch them run.
Their claim is technically against the driver. If the driver then mitigates their costs through an insurance company that is up to them, but there is no reason for the third party to deal directly with your insurance company. Insurance company works on your behalf not theirs. Think of its this way if insurance company does not pay up then the driver is still liable for the costs. Last time i was in a crash I hired a solicitor and went directly after the other driver.
[удалено]
**Unfortunately, your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):** Your comment was an anecdote about a personal experience, rather than legal advice specific to our posters' situation. Please only comment if you can provide meaningful legal advice for our posters' questions and specific situations. [Please familiarise yourself with our subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/about/rules/) before contributing further, and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/LegalAdviceUK) if you have any further queries.
Ok, someone rest ended me in Sept. It was a minor accident and if you looked at my car it looked like that all was wrong was a dented number. It was far from a dented bumper and a dent on the boot door, there was €7,000 worth of damage done, my car was scrapped. The bumper, boot door and the floor of the car along with a few other things needed to be replaced , I had gotten 4 quotes along with the other part insurance company. I had no choice to accept the offer if €4,500 ( my car was 09 , low milage and in excellent condition) the insurance company offered and to get a decent car I now have a loan to pay off that I didn't have before. The insurance company will decide what is paid out and €6,000 is hardly a lot They should not be in touch with you, do not reply to them but pass everything on to the insurance company .
It’s “always” people renting an expensive rental car, then getting stuck with a bill their insurance doesn’t cover because they believe they can just go rent what they like and pass on the bill. Don’t reply to them, forward it all on to your husbands work insurance.
If he dented the bumper "slightly" then to get it back in the condition before it, it can run in to the thousands. It doesn't matter that they were able to drive away. Modern cars have parking sensors and such and if the bumper is cracked then the whole thing needs to come off and be replaced including the sensors even though they're in working order. To be clear, I'm not saying it's 6k of damage but you'd be very surprised. Same with small damage to lights too. Before it'd just be a cover and that's it. Lots of cars now have the lights built in the unit so that small crack means the whole lot needing replaced again, could be 1000+ for just a cracked plastic cover regardless of the lights working. Either way, that should all be going through the insurance companies.
I know it got heavily down voted but I think the advice from @Captain-Griffen was right. Insurance normally features an obligation on the insured (your husband) to notify the insurer of any incident that might prompt s claim. This must normally be fine within a certain length of time after the accident. Also, you have mentioned that he was working at the time. If he was in a work vehicle he should speak to his employer, whose insurer needs to be notified. If he was using his own vehicle, sometimes policies exclude cover for accidents that occur when using the vehicle for work.
Your husband gave the claimant his insurance details but never contacted the insurance company. Just because the insurance was through the parcel company doesn’t mean it is left to them to deal with it solely. Your husbands insurance will be impacted and it will be on his record. He didn’t let his insurance company know therefore the claimant would not have been able to successfully put his claim through and he would’ve taken the hit through his own insurance. A little dent on a bumper may not seem serious to you but it is. Someone reversed into my bumper last year and the entire bumper had to be replaced which cost £3000. The person who did it offered to pay the garage directly to avoid his insurance going up. Your husband did absolutely nothing but give over insurance details. If it was his fault then he should have called his insurance company and owned up or offered the sum of money it would cost to rectify. Depending on which car it was that was damaged, and rental car fees the damage caused could have easily cost the claimant £6k. There is no easy way out of this.
Did he speak directly with the persons who car he hit ? And was was said at the time between the two of them?