Those of us who handle personal injury claims for claimants will be sadly all too familiar with the continued efforts of insurance companies - and the various organisations they instruct - to frustrate the predictable costs regime and bring down the whole system.


It seems that barely a day goes by without some new spurious argument surfacing to justify the defendants' refusal to pay our clients' costs, despite these now being fixed at the levels agreed by those same defendants.



My attention has been drawn to a comment on the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers Web site that reads: 'A colleague of mine has just had a telephone conversation with a lady from F (leading insurer) to try to recover fixed costs on an RTA claim. Our client is a company. My colleague was told that F would not be paying anything towards our costs as there is no need for companies to instruct solicitors but that, if they do, then they should pay their own costs.'

I only wish that this was the exception to the rule. Sadly it is anything but.





It would be tempting to suggest that insurers will be embarrassed by this. However, in reality they will just continue laughing all the way to the bank.



Nicholas Chatters, Lloyd Green, Chelmsford, Essex