Solicitors are joining forces to attack the practice of insurance companies ‘capturing’ personal injury clients.

The move reflects continuing concern that some insurance companies are pressurising claimants into instructing companies’ panel solicitors, rather than their independent solicitor, and to accept reduced compensation.

The Accident Compensation Solicitors Group (ACSG), founded by Saffora Choudri of Middlesex firm SC Law, Elaine Hughes of Humberside firm Barton Solicitors and Robert Webb of Lincolnshire firm HSR Law, aims to raise consumer awareness of Practice Rule 1 – the right to choose one’s own solicitor.

Choudri showed the Gazette ‘an outrageously misleading’ letter from a household name insurance company to an accident victim. The author, who provided a mobile rather than landline telephone number, told the claimant the insurance company alone would act in the victim’s interests. All other parties, including ‘solicitors’, simply wanted ‘a slice of the winnings… for their own gain and all this out of someone else’s misfortune.’

Another ‘intimidating’ tactic used by insurance companies, ACSG chairwoman Hughes said, is to claim that insurance would not cover legal costs if claimants used an independent solicitor. ‘This is bullying and misleading. Under a conditional fee agreement, no legal fees are payable if a claim is unsuccessful. If a claim is successful, then the fees are paid by the other side.’

Association of British Insurers spokesman Malcolm Tarling said most insurers try to give claimants the best possible service and supported government proposals to streamline the settlement of personal injury claims where fault was not an issue. However, he described legal costs as ‘disproportionate, amounting to 88p out of every pound in claims for under £5,000.’

The ACSG says it has already attracted around 40 expressions of interest from law firms. See www.acsg.org.uk.