Know How: the myths of the compensation culture
The number of people making a claim for person injury is declining.
A report from YouGov called “Personal Injury 2014” has put some meat on the bones of the cries of those in the press and in the insurance industry about this so-called “compensation culture”.
Out of the people who were injured only 25% said that they had made a claim. This was a decline from 29% the previous year.
So what are the reasons? The top five reasons give were:
- 9% of those people who did not claim said that they did not think that they had a strong enough case.
- 35% did not claim because they did not think their injury or illness was serious enough to make receive an award of compensation.
- 22% did not believe in claiming compensation.
- 5% were concerned about the legal costs.
- 7% thought that making a claim would be too time consuming for them.
So with the steady decline of personal injury claims being made why is the compensation culture still being mentioned? We cannot say why there are continued newspaper stories in the press about someone having a silly accident in ridiculous circumstances and trying to make a claim? No solicitor worth his salt would take on a case which had no hope of being successful. The frivolous claims do not make it past that first phone call with a solicitor. You may read about those people complaining about making a silly claim but you will never read about those claims having their day in court let alone being successful. The press cases are sensational and the people involved will quietly fade away never to be heard of again until the next time that the newspapers want to complain about the compensation culture.
There are however problems.
Perhaps the biggest problem are the people selling your data which leads to an unfortunate number of people being contacted by claims-farmers.
Unsolicited telephone calls and text messages still happen. We have probably all, at some point in time, received a text informing us that our cheque for £5,000 for an injury that never happened is waiting for us to just pick up the phone. Our advice is just to delete the text messages and not to bother with them.
Only last night we were on LinkedIN (of all places) and were amazed to find people seeking to sell data of recent car accidents. “We also have fresh 24-36 hour RTA insurance data for sale” writes Tony B. Data Supplier. We wonder how many of those people on Tony B’s list of names had consented to him selling their private details and where he had obtained that data in the first place. If you have a car accident your details may be sold by your insurer, the garage who carried out the repairs, the car hire company or the many other people involved. Plugging this gap seems like an impossible task.
PI Support do not concern ourselves with these practices. If you need our help you will contact us and we will give you the best advice that we possibly can.
We hope this is clear but if you wish to discuss this article with us then please call or drop us an email.