Some solicitors love to hit you with catchphrases and tag lines when it comes to payouts and timescales for a road accident compensation claim.
We on the other hand like to give our clients the honest and straight advice.
So here’s an example of a road accident that was rapidly settled due to our efficient way of working and the way in which these cases are dealt with.
The reason why this blog should be useful to you is because I’m going to give you a real life example of a case that settled in six months; and I’m going to explain to you briefly what happened at each stage. This way you should gain an understanding of a typical road accident claim and how fast it can be settled.
Some lawyers love to tell you it can be done and dusted in weeks or in less than three months. Whilst on occasions that can be true, most cases do take a longer.
Here’s the story of Mr J who settled his straightforward whiplash claim for £2,014.88 after being hit in the rear by another driver in a concertina collision.
We electronically submitted the Claim Notification Form to the insurers of the driver at fault in the middle of January this year, triggering the insurer’s investigatory timeframe of 15 business days to start. The insurers accepted liability within days and we had begun instructing our medical agency to arrange for a report for Mr J to be seen by an expert.
The expert report is important as it allows us to accurately value the claim. An appointment was obtained for the middle of February with a privately instructed consultant so we could obtain a medico-legal report to substantiate his claim for injuries.
In the meantime we received a ‘pre-medical offer’ which is an offer to settle the claim without medical evidence. Insurers use this as a tactic to quickly get rid of claims by keeping costs down through under settlement and less legal fees. The offer was a standard offer of £1,000 and we advised our client that we can’t give him any advice about the offer without the expert medical evidence.
He sensibly rejected the offer, meaning we could obtain the evidence needed to properly settle the case. Many people who deal direct with insurers fall in to this trap – and given that you already know he settled for twice that amount, you can see why such a pitfall can cost an innocent accident victim thousands of pounds!
It normally takes around four to six weeks for the report to come through, and we received it in no time at all. It was sent to Mr J once we had finished sorting out his schedule of Special Damages for losses and expenses. This schedule covers things such as lost earnings, travel expenses, medication expenses, and other losses associated with the accident and injuries. You can claim these on top of your injury payout.
We’re now in April – and we have authority for the value of the claim that we need to submit to the insurers using the online portal system. The rules mean that we have to put the first offer in, so we tend to go in quite high because the insurers will always go as low as possible. It is a bargaining process.
Once we had the authority for the value of the claim and for the Special Damages Schedule, we submitted the Final Settlement Pack to the insurers in May and requested either their acceptance of our offer, or their counter proposals.
They have around six weeks to consider the pack and come back to us with their decision – we received a counter offer in June in the sum of £2,014.88 which was what was accepted. We advised our client to accept the amount as a good and accurate amount that reflected the value of his claim. He sensibly took our advice, and we received the cheque for the money a few weeks later in July.
So there you have it! A simple road traffic accident whiplash claim settled in less than six months with a breakdown of what happened at each step of the way, and why.
Of course, Mr J could have accepted the pre-medical offer of £1,000 and settled the claim in less than a month – but for being patient, he was awarded more than double that. Most minor whiplash claims can settle for amounts of up to £6,000, so always bear this in mind when considering the insurers attempts to get a claim off the table sooner rather than later.
Work needs to be done to settle a claim –- six months is more than reasonable in a case like this, and now you (hopefully) understand why.
