Vindicated: another whiplash victim fights back

Posted 24/09/2012

Tom Ranson of Ashtons Legal injury services has obtained personal injury compensation for Mrs S, from Essex, who required medical treatment after suffering a whiplash injury in a road traffic accident. A settlement was finally agreed shortly before the case was due to go to trial.

The defendant motorist was a medical doctor who, having spent less than a couple of minutes exchanging details with our client (which included admitting full liability), felt able to state to his insurers that Mrs S could not have been injured in the accident!

Consequently, the defendant insurer rejected Mrs S’s claim for compensation, despite having received independent expert medical evidence which supported her case. Instead they chose to put forward a very low offer, which Mrs S rejected. She then instructed us to issue Court proceedings on her behalf.

Notwithstanding the evidence, the defendant maintained that this was a “low velocity impact” case and that the collision was insufficient to have caused Mrs S any injury. In other words they were saying that, either, Mrs S was fabricating her symptoms or, by complete coincidence, they had spontaneously started at precisely the same time as she was involved in the accident.

Having gone to the time and expense of obtaining their own expert medical evidence, as well as a report from a motor engineer, the defendant eventually accepted Mrs S’s original suggestion of how much she should receive in compensation.

By refusing to allow herself to be intimidated by the defendant insurer and by demonstrating a willingness to go to trial if necessary, Mrs S was entirely vindicated having achieved four times the amount the insurers had originally offered.

Tom Ranson comments: “Unfortunately, Mrs S’s case is by no means an isolated example. With the cost of litigation very much at the forefront of all our minds, it remains baffling as to why insurers routinely fail to realistically value and suitably appraise the claims before them. Instead, they often choose to make low offers, run cases that they should settle and ‘muddy the water’ with spurious allegations, all of which only leads to a significant increase in the cost of the litigation process – through no fault of the innocent claimant.  Needless to say, it is vital that claimants and their representatives are robust and give short shrift to such tactics to avoid claimants being unfairly criticised and walking away with less than they should receive.”