The insurance industry seeks to heap blame on lawyers for problems with the compensation system (see [2008] Gazette, 28 March, 1).


Here are three true accounts of my dealings with insurance companies in recent months:



- Earlier this year, my car was involved in an accident. It was not my fault. I was minding my business, refuelling my car, when a lorry drove into it, causing several hundred pounds worth of damage. Both the lorry driver and I were insured through X insurance company. The insurers dealt with the repairs to my car quickly, but were dismally slow and inefficient in dealing with refunding to me my uninsured losses and expense. Twice I had to sit on the phone for an hour while I was passed from one unhelpful department to another. A process that should have taken days ran into weeks. Eventually the matter was settled and I made a complaint to X, which was upheld.



- A client contacted us over an accident at work. As a result of the accident, he had been off work for several weeks. Initially, he was paid his wages by his employer. He was contacted by a representative of the insurers, who offered him £800 to settle his claim. They argued that he had not suffered a loss because his employers were still paying him. The client was not impressed, especially as, soon afterwards, his pay stopped. The true value of the claim is likely to be in the region of £15,000, but if the insurers had their way they would have settled his claim for a fraction of what it was worth.



- A client had an extreme reaction to a cosmetic product which necessitated corrective surgery. The insurers for the manufacturers (a large pharmaceutical company) persistently ignored our letters and failed to provide documentation about other complaints received in respect of the same product. Eventually, they admitted that our client had been injured as a result of a rare reaction to the product, but they have refused to pay up. Our client has had to go to the expense of issuing proceedings in order to make progress in a case where, common sense suggests, the pharmaceutical company should do the decent thing and pay up.



It is always fun for vested interests to have a pop at lawyers, but the reality is that we are the best hope of people obtaining justice against the well-resourced and powerful. If control of injury cases was left in the hands of insurers, I have no confidence at all that they would automatically deal fairly or honestly with those who make claims. Their aim is to save money. And that is precisely what they will do - at the expense of the victims.



Richard Barr, solicitor, West Norfolk and King's Lynn Law Society