Fraud cases

Personal injury lawyers don’t exactly have a good reputation at the best of times. However, this has been exacerbated this month with a spate of news items uncovering fraudulent claims. This is nothing new to the civil justice system in itself. However, it is the number of cases which is perhaps surprising. This is also reflected in the increase of such suspected claims going through the County and higher courts. This might be due to the increased number of such cases although it is probably more likely due to other factors as well. The first is advances in technology in the past few years. This includes increasingly sophisticated methods of both gathering and sorting data as well as enhancements to old fashioned detective work such as improved hidden cameras and CCTV. The other factor may be that the insurance industry has scroed large successes in recent years in fighting first credit hire cases and then costs cases on a large scale. Having sharpened their collective teeth on these issues, the spotlight now appears to be shining on fraud. This will mean that defendant lawyers will have to keep up with those at the forefront of this area if they are to keep their business. It will also mean that claimant lawyers will have to be even more careful about the claims they take on. The issues now surrounding fraudulent and exaggerated claims are now issues of which all personal injury lawyers need to be aware. What remains to be seen is how the legal arguments develop over the next few years. For example, how the courts will view low impact claims and also what view they will take as to the effect of one fraudulent element of claim on the other heads. Unfortunately, as with so many of these issues, what is often forgotten in these fights is that the ultimate victims are likely to be those who pay liability insurance premiums on the one hand and those needing to take out after the event insurance premiums against possible costs orders on the other.