“It is unfortunate that the insurance industry has chosen to go down this route.”
Those were the words of Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO) executive director Matthew Maxwell Scott in response to the supposed move by the UK insurance industry to contest the recent ruling of the Court of Appeal (CoA) in the Rabot v Hassam and Briggs v Laditan hybrid injuries test cases.
In its January judgment, the CoA held that non-tariff injury damages should be dealt with separately from the tariff damages and on a common law basis.
Now, Insurance Business understands that the case may be elevated further.
Commenting on the development, Minster Law chief legal officer Matt Currie asserted in an emailed statement: “It’s disappointing that insurers have taken the decision to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court on the ruling of the CoA on mixed injuries.
“The failure of the MoJ (Ministry of Justice) in dealing with the issue of valuing multi-site injuries prior to reforms going live, caused uncertainty for consumers and delay to many settlements. We had hoped that the Court of Appeal decision would have brought that uncertainty to an end and allowed us to work collaboratively with insurers, to identify how we can start delivering outcomes for the customer – this was, after all, how the process was intended to work at its inception.
“While we now wait to see if leave to appeal is granted, consumers are left with more uncertainty, which creates further delays to a significant number of settlements – while keeping them on the reserve books of insurers and increasing costs.”
Similarly, Maxwell Scott does not welcome the latest in the test cases.
The ACSO executive director declared in a statement sent to Insurance Business: “The Court of Appeal decision should enable thousands of disputed claims currently held up in the system to be settled and for injured people to be able to get on with their lives. Instead, they could remain in a legal limbo.”
For Maxwell Scott, the decision to turn to the Supreme Court is “doubly perverse” because insurers “could also have got on with settling the claims backlog, some of which would have to be litigated, so we would have seen some much-needed easing of pressure on the Civil Courts.”
He alleged that insurers seem to be cutting off their nose to spite their face.
“The Supreme Court may choose to decline the application,” noted Maxwell Scott, “and while that is our hope, should it choose to hear the case we would like to see the court rule in favour of the injured party, especially given the dramatically lower levels of compensation they now receive for whiplash injuries.
“In this case, the relevant question to ask is surely ‘cui bono?’, who benefits. If the Court of Appeal decision is reversed, it will be insurers and their shareholders who will win while consumers with multiple injuries lose. That seems unfair, unwarranted, and unreasonable.”
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