Be Excellent To Each Other

Fucking astounding.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21168310

A bit further down it says the cars insurer's might pay out for any injury, but if not, the Motor Insurer's bureau could pay out (and bump up everyone's premiums).

It does seem barmy, but if I were a person that is hit by a stolen car, and you need compensation, then I'd be asking the owner, insurer and MIB as the thief has probably scarpered. The alternative is the injured party gets no compensation, which wouldn't be just.

EDIT: "If the driver responsible for the road traffic accident has stolen the vehicle involved in the accident and is identified by the Police then any insurance policy taken out by the owner of the vehicle may compensate innocent victims of injury. This decision will be down to the discretion of the insurance company involved. If they are not willing to deal with it or if there is no insurance policy in force for the vehicle at all, the only course of action would be to make a claim through the MIB." from a PI law firm's website. I suspect others can tell you more.

Surely you'd be looking to the victims of crime compensation fund?

Isn't that just violent crime? This could be "being in an accident with an uninsured driver"?

I dunno.

Sue them! Sue them all! I guess.

Running someone over doesn't strike me as coming under the definition of a "non violent action". I don't remember Ghandi mowing his opponents down.

It is excluded*, so I guess going through insurers is the only way.


*Page 7

Pfft.

Anyway, it makes sense, as if RTAs caused by driving without due care/dangerous driving etc were covered by the whatsit criminal compensation thingy it'd have no money left after paying out for all those whiplash claims.

Speaking of whiplash, this is still aces:



Anyway, as you were.

What if the thief drives into my house, lodging a brick in the bumper, makes off again and then runs into a police officer, clipping them only with the brick, avoiding them but for the brick?

Do they still go after the car's owner, or do they sue me instead because my house viciously hit-and-runned them with no thoughts for the children because it wouldn't understand?

And most importantly of all, why would it understand, it's an inanimate object made of (one fewer than yesterday) bricks?

Bik! Yay! Hi Bik, welcome back!

I'd sue my employer. There's nothing compelling a pig to chase a car other than their job.

The thing is, if a policeman wants you to pull over you shouldn't. That way, tehy get to chase you, you get to be chased, they get to call the helicopter out, news people get to write a report about it and everyone is happy, using their training, and having a grand old time for a while. It is your civic duty.

Only if you're driving a Honda.

In Eve, there were many alliances with names like "The Chaos Collective, Band of Brothers, and so on. my favorite though, was "The Honda Accord"

Hello. I'm probably not back (for good).

Hm-hm-hm,
hm-hm-hm,
hm-hm-hm for goooood.

Wow!

In fairness, that's the individual officer acting on her own, rather than anything instigated by the police. Clearly she's been watching daytime telly and seen all those claims management company ads.

Still, wow.

One of the trainees I had used to work at a claim company, and a fair proportion of the cases she'd worked on were of the "wow" category. I blame the government for allowing claim companies to exist, personally.

I hope she gets dragged into financial ruin.

The only way this sort of fucking abominable bullshit can be redeemed is if the PC in question pays the difference it will make to the insured's premiums out of her winnings.

We're heading towards an American system here now. Lest we forget the woman in the US who was in McDonald's and threw a fresh cup of coffee towards her partner as he was leaving the building following an argument, ran after him, slipped on the coffee she'd thrown and got over a million dollars of compo out of McDonald's. First time I'd ever felt sympathy for them.

Of course the next step with all this will be retribution - people getting stiffed by this bullshit thinking "well, if this cunt want compensation I'll give them something to want compensation for".

Jesus Christ. Just because one idiot solicitor writes a letter on behalf of an injured person who's probably just enquired whether there is a claim doesn't mean that the person being "sued" (or their insurers) will end up paying any compensation whatsoever.

Stupid claims don't win.

The only idiots here are the idiot solicitors who decide to run these claims.

I'm glad this case has been given some press. It might shame the solicitors to stop running hopeless claims. This case won't get near a court cause it'll just stop being pursued by the solicitors.

We aren't turning into an American system. Compensation is still comparatively low. You lose your little finger? You'll get a meagre £7000. Would you give your little finger for double that sum? Stop whining about things you know little about.

Oops. Sorry. I got a little tetchy there since that's, like, my job and shit.

The industry has gone to shit though.

Sorry, once again, no offence meant.

heh. To be fair, GY sounded a bit like the new Cavey there. We've done the "compensation culture" bullshit to death in a thread a year or two ago.

Who let the industry go to shit? In my line of work we require and respect the public trust so if we find someone being inappropriate and undermining the integrity of support workers on the whole, we run them out, even at cost to ourselves.

I don't see much of that from solicitors. I believe the industry has too much money in it and fees/wages etc should be capped somewhere slightly north of the average wage, because if people have too much to lose, their principals go out of the fucking window.

Maybe I don't understand properly, but that's the point. People don't, and they're sick of it.

Short answer - no, you don't understand it properly.

EDIT - Capping wages? Jesus fuck. That could apply to every single fucking industry, surely? Cap their wages and all of them will behave. That'll stop the 0.01% who are misbehaving!

I didn't come here for a lecture in communism.

I certainly don't see how defenestrating head teachers is any kind of solution.

How long have you been waiting for an opportunity to use that word on here?

Citation needed on the McDonalds thing. That sounds like you believed something on Facebook.

Snopes has a minor variation on it listed as false here so yeah, it's nonsense.

Well, if the one website that says its not true says so, the ones that say it is must be wrong. I recall the reference being from a paper, some eight or nine years ago so no, I can't provide a citation. But of course I was expressing a sentiment, it's convenient to pick it apart, I suppose.

Where's the citation for the .01 percent misbehaving?

I note no-one is addressing my point about who has let the industry go to shit. If it's in such a bad state who is responsible, us little folk who don't understand it all or those who do? Or should we just lump it? I, for one, can't spend the time learning law to deal with it because I'm too busy trying to house abused families for less than half the national average wage.

A wage cap wouldn't make sense for a great many industries but in law it would be comforting to know that there's only so much of a vested interest involved individuals can have. There needs to be some wing clipping for these ambulance chasers, at street and corporate level because the greater good is more important than whether some solicitor earns that last couple of twenties of thousands a year.

I may have watched loads of TV bullshit but surely observation should be a pretty main point for a cop. Otherwise clearly they're just morons in uniforms. I tried to put this more eloquently, but I don't care, I've seen loads of Sherlock stuff and observation is a big deal, especially when it's something your stepping over.

What our country is missing is tanks out of planes! The faster we can get tanks out of planes we'll realise this is how we're wasting money and put it into not tanks coming out of planes.I love tanks coming out of planes but this is becoming a danger. Do not do it.

Also forum readers, some of you may have the power to stop war, please do, because it's pretty boring, one-sided, boring, and people die. and boring.

pfffft, ok, please yourselves.

I don't buy the line that the ambulance chasers are all stand up guys doing a great job and that frivolous claims are some sort of rare occurrence and anyone who thinks otherwise is a tabloid believing idiot. The cost of claims for personal injury after minor car accidents has absolutely spiralled. Have any sort of accident and you'll get a load of texts from these bottom-feeding pricks encouraging you to make a claim. There's no way that its only 0.01% of these claims which are bogus even if they aren't headline grabbers like the example here.

I agree. I'll ignore every post that suggests this.

I guess this targets the less well off as well. I was under the impression that unless you leave the keys in it most modern cars are almost impossible to steal?

I totally agree with your sentiment that all the ambulance chasing is bullshit, but you can't express that using some made up internet nonsense and then get annoyed when people point it out man. Especially when you then follow up by making vague reference to, "the ones that say it is," and some paper you might've read nine years ago; you just come off like someone's mad aunt on Facebook which undermines your real point.

The industry hasn't gone to shit, GY. I suspect the only reason Saturnalian said that is because he works at a PI firm and they have to deal with the incompetent twats at claims management companies (CMCs).

Frivolous claims can be brought - may well be brought one often, as well. They're encouraged by the CMCs, to be honest, as most of the people working at CMCs aren't actually lawyers. However, if that frivolous claim gets anywhere near court, they get chucked out. We went round the houses on this with Cavey a while back, and fairly comprehensively showed that courts aren't awarding chancer twats with shit loads of compo cash.

Whether insurance companies are settling these is a different matter, but then given how hard it is to get them to cough up when their policy holder is actually at fault I suspect it isn't often.

There's a great website called Bailii.org which provides access to court reports for free. If the industry is out of control I'm sure you could find loads of examples of people getting compensation for slipping on coffee or burning themselves on tea.

All that said, if I could change anythign it would be the following: ban on referral fees, as a lot of claims are encouraged by insurance companies. Ban on CMCs or law firms operating as companies. Ban on advertising for legal services (back to how it used to be).

There's a load of other things I'd change too, but those are the ones related to the "compensation culture" impression that people get.

That wasn't a statement by me that 0.01% of claims are bogus, Mark. I suspect the number of out of control bent solicitors is probably around that figure, though, which is what I was getting at. And to stop them we should cap everyone's salary, clearly.

The texts you get are from CMCs, which are different. Blame the insurance industry.

Yeah sorry I'd just woken up and not read it properly. But still "everything's fine" wrt compensation claims, really? I do blame the insurance companies and CMCs and I blame the solicitors too (obviously most of all I blame the fucking pricks who put in bogus whiplash claims etc but that's a bit harder to deal with). Not sure what the actual answer is but they all need some sort of a legislative kick in the bollocks.

Erm, they are. From today! Don't you read your Gazette?

You'll be telling me you don't know what LASPO and QOWCS are next!

Comprehensive amendments to the CPR? A review by some bloke called Jackson?

Yeah, it's one of the few things I agree with. The changes to the recoverable fees and the changes to
legal aid all suck massive balls though. Grayling's an idiot.

However. I'd go further and ban referral fees within the insurance industry for everything. I'd also ban the linked garages and hire car firms, all of which cause an increase in claim levels.


LASPO I know but QOWCS? You're making this shit up.

1) Only if you live in Northern Island.
2) Only if the claim succeeds. It won't. Any judge worth his salt will find anyway they can to protect the innocent victim. It might just fail on public policy grounds alone. It reminds me of the Worboys case, in a fashion, as it's a matter if the construction of the insurance terms and prevailing laws. The rape victims sued Worboys car insurance. They lost.

Qualified one way cost shifting, dude. Litigation is all about the QOWCS now.