Industry news roundup: week ended 16 Sept 2013:
Whether it’s spurious or legitimate, an accident claim has a serious cost – and not just to the party held responsible for the injury!
Claims fraud is, for example, a serious problem right now in the UK. Why, just the other day there was a massive scam uncovered where two blokes tried to bilk £77,000 from an insurance company – and if they had succeeded, it would have been all of us who would have ended up footing the bill!
Luckily these two bastards, Darren Gallimore and Kenneth Nash, were caught as they were in the midst of organising their ‘cash for crash’ whiplash claim with the help of several other family members. Thankfully an investigation by the insurer discovered that the so-called ‘accident’ might not have ever occurred, and further probing saw the plan uncovered – now the two ringleaders are spending a nice, long 12 months in prison for their attempts to defraud. Good, I say – my insurance premiums are high enough without them having to rocket upwards because my firm needs to recover the cost of fraudulent claims!
But just because fraudulent claims tend to be for ungodly amounts of cash doesn’t mean that legitimate claims can’t be as expensive. In fact, a new Freedom of Information request recently revealed that Blackpool Council is currently being sued for in excess of £45,000 from school-related injuries alone!
That’s right – staff, pupils, and even visitors to Blackpool schools are getting injured left and right it seems. There were some 36 claims that were currently working their way through the courts at the moment, with the most recent being May of this year and the oldest stemming from September of 2010, and the injuries range from simple slips and trips to ending up injured after being hit by a football.
I’m not saying that people don’t end up hurt from accidents – it happens, we all know it – but being hit by a football? Is that truly something that passes for being injured enough to make a claim for personal injury compensation? Sure I can see getting your nose bloodied by an errant, out of control football, but for pity’s sake don’t claim thousands of pounds in injury!