Solicitors contributing to Ireland's Insurance Fraud Culture

Kivaro

The dogs on the streets know that this is happening, but finally, we had a judge come out and say it today in a court case involving the Stokes and McDonagh clans from London. The misfortunate Travellers (who had multiple previous accidents claims) were on a "sight-seeing tour of Dublin" when they got into this unfortunate accident. Judge Jacqueline Linnane, while dismissing the five fraudulent damages claims for up to €300,000, directed that the papers in all of the cases be sent to the DPP. However, she also suggested that the Law Society should also be contacted regarding the conduct of the solicitors who presented the London Travelers. More on the story here.

As I said on the swing-gate thread, we all know that the Law Society represents the best interests of their membership, so nothing will come from it on that end, but maybe the DPP could prosecute the law firm? Especially if they knowingly contributed to the filing of these false claims?
We've heard numerous excuses from Irish solicitors after their client's fraudulent claims have been dismissed in court, maybe it's time for some of these solicitors to face court themselves ............. as defendants.

Tell me how

I think it is next to impossible to prosecute solicitors in cases where they are acting for someone else unless that someone else makes a statement implying that the solicitor directed them to make a fraudulent claim. Solicitors can forever plead behind the fact that they are acting under the instruction of their client.

Solicitors who are that way inclined to act immorally have long learned how to keep their fingers out of the cookie jar.

yosser hughes

In almost all reporting of these types of cases, the plaintiff's solicitors are never named. In the case above it just mentions the defendant's solicitors and a previous solicitors that dropped the plaintiff's case.
I'm not sure why that is. Maybe someone on here does?

Kivaro

The judge in this case said:
"none of these cases would proceed to court unless solicitors agreed to act in them and she felt some committee within the Law Society might be concerned about it."

But more importantly, she said:
"perhaps some solicitors should be a bit more selective about who they take on, because maybe they were contributing to this sort of fraud."

I understand that solicitors can claim a lack of due diligence on why obvious fraud cases are taken on by them. What I am saying is that there should be some consequence on solicitors who proceed with these types of cases. Do you think if these solicitors were assigned partial costs against them when losing fraudulent insurance cases that they would take on these dubious cases in the first place?

dhaughton99

A kid got €40,000 yesterday for being stuck in a lift for 45 mins with his father. Yeah I think the solicitors have a lot to answer for.

McMurphy

Tell me how wrote: »

I think it is next to impossible to prosecute solicitors in cases where they are acting for someone else unless that someone else makes a statement implying that the solicitor directed them to make a fraudulent claim. Solicitors can forever plead behind the fact that they are acting under the instruction of their client.

Solicitors who are that way inclined to act immorally have long learned how to keep their fingers out of the cookie jar.

Josepha Madigan came out today and proclaimed that she was delighted how the internal review that leo initiated, (and apparently David Kennedy took upon himself to offer witnesses complete anonymity) portrayed her role in the Maria Bailey controversy.

Now, presumably after seeing how Feckin bad it looked prompted Leo to say that Kennedy's written assurances means he can never show the report to the plebs.

I guess we'll just have to take your word for it Josepha so......

Sonny noggs

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

Josepha Madigan came out today and proclaimed that she was delighted how the internal review that leo initiated, (and apparently David Kennedy took upon himself to offer witnesses complete anonymity) portrayed her role in the Maria Bailey controversy.

Now, presumably after seeing how Feckin bad it looked prompted Leo to say that Kennedy's written assurances means he can never show the report to the plebs.

I guess we'll just have to take your word for it Josepha so......

Can we not keep this sh1te to the dedicated thread?

McMurphy

Sonny noggs wrote: »

Can we not keep this sh1te to the dedicated thread?

Checks thread title......

Dial Hard

The Law Society have an inherent conflict of interest in that they both regulate and advocate for the profession. It's a ludicrous situation, you clearly can't do both but it's allowed to continue for reasons I genuinely cannot fathom.

Sonny noggs

<SNIP>

Do not comment or speculate on a poster’s previous identity.

dudara

Tell me how

Dial Hard wrote: »

The Law Society have an inherent conflict of interest in that they both regulate and advocate for the profession. It's a ludicrous situation, you clearly can't do both but it's allowed to continue for reasons I genuinely cannot fathom.

Michael Noonan tried to tackle elements of this (IIRC) way back when he was Minister for Justice and he got turfed out on his ear for the audacity to even suggest reform was to be considered.

Treble double

The judiciary run this country and are not going to be taken on, remember judges of all grades are former solicitors themselves. The whole court system has nothing to do with justice it's about making as much money as possible for the legal practitioners. Free legal aid is making millionaire's out of two bit solicitors, who basically get the case adjourned for their "client" a number of times to increase what they earn from it, then enter a guilty plea and give some spiv about their clients tough upbringing and addiction problems and a suspended sentence is handed down and the cycle continues. Why do you think no one gets locked up in this country, putting these lads behind bars means less potential earners for legal practitioners. Fact.

Treble double

The judiciary run this country and are not going to be taken on, remember judges of all grades are former solicitors themselves. The whole court system has nothing to do with justice it's about making as much money as possible for the legal practitioners. Free legal aid is making millionaire's out of two bit solicitors, who basically get the case adjourned for their "client" a number of times to increase what they earn from it, then enter a guilty plea and give some spiv about their clients tough upbringing and addiction problems and a suspended sentence is handed down and the cycle continues. Why do you think no one gets locked up in this country, putting these lads behind bars means less potential earners for legal practitioners. Fact.

McMurphy

Sonny noggs wrote: »

<SNIP>

Keep up.

Thread title + the OP.

As I said on the swing-gate thread

Dial Hard

Why were posts deleted???

dhaughton99

Funny that RTÉ doesn’t mention that they are travelers, while every other media organization does.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0710/1061285-courts-compensation/

Sonny noggs

dhaughton99 wrote: »

Funny that RTÉ doesn’t mention that they are travelers, while every other media organization does.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0710/1061285-courts-compensation/

Surprised any coverage mentions it, they rarely do, although it is fairly obvious here from the surname and the particular scam...

Snow Garden

Great news and we have the Independent journalists to thank.

NIMAN

Sonny noggs wrote: »

Surprised any coverage mentions it, they rarely do, although it is fairly obvious here from the surname and the particular scam...

They rarely do because most of the media seems to be pro-traveller these days.

Not sure why they decided to side with them or when it started?

dudara

Dial Hard wrote: »

Why were posts deleted???

If you have questions, please contact mods, rather than bringing it up on thread.

As far as I can see, there have been no posts deleted on this thread. The site is experiencing performance issues though at the moment, and that is causing issues when viewing threads.

suicide_circus

we can only hope and pray that this will start a cooling of the compo culture which has made me ashamed of our society: greed, me feinism, blatant fraud, greasy scam artists, rewarding stupidity, punishing entrepreneurs, shafting policy holders.

i want to see the DPP going after the fraudsters, i want to see the Law Society going after ambulance chasers and i want to see compo awards falling in line with our neighbours. i wont hold my breath

Kivaro

suicide_circus wrote: »

we can only hope and pray that this will start a cooling of the compo culture which has made me ashamed of our society: greed, me feinism, blatant fraud, greasy scam artists, rewarding stupidity, punishing entrepreneurs, shafting policy holders.

i want to see the DPP going after the fraudsters, i want to see the Law Society going after ambulance chasers and i want to see compo awards falling in line with our neighbours. i wont hold my breath

If you look at the track record of the Law Society and its actions against rogue solicitors, you will find that very few are actually struck off.
On the plus side, it is good to see other media outlets picking up the story. It was on the front page of the Examiner this morning. It is not often that a national newspapers would have the words "solicitors" and "complicit" and "false claims" on the headline of the front page.

Mark my words though: there will be a robust rebuke of the judge's comments by the usual vested interest crowd.

Jurgen The German

People that are involved in the most minor of collisions often claim PTSD following the accident, someone feeds them stuff like that and it's not difficult to work out who.

dr.fuzzenstein

Jurgen The German wrote: »

People that are involved in the most minor of collisions often claim PTSD following the accident, someone feeds them stuff like that and it's not difficult to work out who.

They mostly claim whiplash. Pretty much accepted at face value, minimum payout according to book of quantum €12.5k and that is for light cases with no lasting damage, with no way to prove an actual injury.
Hence treated as a guaranteed income by selected members of society.
The worst thing about this, it makes any genuine claim immediately look shady.
It would be foolish to suggest that an award paid out with no questions, for pretty much any accident, even at 5 km/h with no damage to cars, for no visible or provable damage at levels of €12 to €20k (and way north of that), does not get abused to high heavens.
There have to be the usual chancers and gougers and the usual Maries who would claim because they're "entitled" to it.

If you want to know why Irish insurers will only insure new cars, under 2 liters, with less than 110 hp, single driver, zero points, no vans, no points, over 30, under 70, nothing with the word "Sport" in it, no convertibles, no imports, no second cars, well, it is to do with Ireland's crazy legal system.
If you shut up and pay out, you will lose €20k.
If you fight an obvious fraudulant claim, the judge will hand out €30k and add €40k legal fees on top of that.
Imposing crazy conditions is the only way insurers have some control.
No such nonsense here in Germany, where payouts are much smaller, require more proof and, for some crazy reason I can't figure out, the prevelance of whiplash is a fratcion of what it is in Ireland.
I came to Germany from Ireland insured a 2 liter diesel Cmax with 135 HP, 12 years old, with no insurance track record in Germany since 1994.
The rep from the insurance put my data in and gave me a quote of just under €700 and profusely apologised that it was so outrageously expensive.
After 3 years I am now under €500 for the same car, which will be 15 years old next year and I am expecting another discount then.

hullaballoo

I always find it amusing to see these threads, which rightly complain about fraud in personal injuries litigation - an absolutely abhorrent practice that must be dealt with to the fullest extent, albeit one that is rare in the space - but which also contain contributions that are in and of themselves completely made up, fabricated, and have no basis in fact or reality.

(Some people already know the following.) For full disclosure, I am not a solicitor but a barrister who advises and represents some personal injuries plaintiffs. So far, none of my cases have been reported in the media, before the sleuths weigh in. I wouldn't say I am particularly biased because I'm not exactly in love with personal injuries work and tbh, I do see some practices in the work area that I would count as not upstanding. However, I have to emphasise that the vast majority of practitioners in the area are upstanding professionals.

But as is very common nowadays in any debate is the absolute trenchant refusal of either side to bother with the middle ground (where the truth usually is.) Everything is polarised and the propaganda machines go into overdrive to out-smear the "other side" in these conversations. It's useless trying to argue against lies with lies but that's the way public debate is these days.

I see this site as something of a last bastion of public discourse where this doesn't, or at least shouldn't happen.

Then these threads crop up. An area I know well. The propaganda is in full swing here.

Jurgen The German wrote: »

People that are involved in the most minor of collisions often claim PTSD following the accident, someone feeds them stuff like that and it's not difficult to work out who.

This is a bizarre contention to start with. Firstly, PTSD is very rarely claimed in road traffic incidents. PTSD is a specific psychiatric condition that develops following traumatic stress that simply wouldn't arise in most road accidents. It arises in the likes of sexual assault, the most severe instances of workplace bullying and from things like army service. All those gruesome things that really mess with people's minds, to use that vernacular.

PTSD is so significant that it is especially recognised by the courts and can be claimed for in and of itself, unlike other kinds of psychiatric/psychological insult. It simply does not arise in a minor RTA.

What you might see is an element of a claim from an RTA dealing with adverse psychological impact. This can be significant for a plaintiff even in a low impact scenario because some people don't deal well with being in any kind of incident. Some people suffer all kinds of adverse psychological symptoms that can have a material effect on their enjoyment of life.

But do you know what, it's almost not worth claiming for these symptoms at all because they attract almost no damages whatsoever at present. When I say almost no damages, I mean they might add a few hundred onto the damages if you get a sympathetic judge if it gets that far. These complaints wouldn't even be taken into consideration in settlement talks.

If you don't fall into one of a small number of named conditions (PTSD being one), you might as well stand on the street and whistle for all the good putting it into your pleadings does.

So it would be absolutely meaningless and bizarre for me, or a solicitor, to "feed" anyone stuff like that because it has no material bearing on the case whatsoever. Never mind that beyond jurisdictional limits, the size of the award has no bearing on the fees paid to lawyers for a long time now because unlike in the US, we charge for the work we actually do and not a percentage of the award/settlement. That's probably another discussion that could be had because what do you think the impact of that change has been? Answers on a postcard.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

They mostly claim whiplash. Pretty much accepted at face value, minimum payout according to book of quantum €12.5k and that is for light cases with no lasting damage, with no way to prove an actual injury.

Whiplash can be "proven" or more accurately evidenced with MRI but it is too expensive to use in a bog-standard whiplash case where the recovery period is relatively short and there are no complications. This isn't my position to defend btw, but the medical profession/HSE's. I don't know why as a medical professional one wouldn't want to use the best available diagnostics to ensure the right treatment is given. I don't know why insurance companies wouldn't insist on MRI being carried out. Possibly because they would have to pay for it only to be shown that yes, this person has a soft tissue injury and is in pain?

I dislike pulling posts apart and quoting them line-by-line but I think it's necessary to avoid a wall-o-text situation given some of the lies here.

On the Book of Quantum, there is no minimum payment. Or the minimum payment is theoretically €0. I have attached it to my post. The relevant section is Section 2 Neck Injuries on page 27. It says:

PIAB Book of Quantum wrote:

Minor – substantially recovered up to €15,700
Minor – a full recovery expected up to €19,400

I don't know what the difference between the two descriptions of "minor" there is and I suspect only the authors of the book are aware but what I take that to mean, as a professional, is that the maximum award for a minor whiplash injury is under €20,000.

That might be too much for an injury of its type in your opinion but you will note, as will anyone else not already bored mindless, that your minimum payout figure is nonsense.

Hence treated as a guaranteed income by selected members of society.
The worst thing about this, it makes any genuine claim immediately look shady.

It depends on your standpoint but I'm not going to argue the premise. What I would point out is that certain kinds of individual will attract the attention of the media reporters who hang around the courts - reporters only too eager to catch the partially self-propagated populist wave of anti-personal-injuries-plaintiffs sentiment.

Again, the vast majority of PI plaintiffs go completely unnoticed.

It would be foolish to suggest that an award paid out with no questions, for pretty much any accident, even at 5 km/h with no damage to cars, for no visible or provable damage at levels of €12 to €20k (and way north of that), does not get abused to high heavens.

There have to be the usual chancers and gougers and the usual Maries who would claim because they're "entitled" to it.

Minimal impact incidents are controversial even among lawyers. No doubt about that. And there's certainly authority in the form of binding decisions of the Superior Courts to say that minimal impact incidents cannot cause injuries.

So again, I'm not sure exactly where your facts and figures here come from but my experience is that claiming for minimal impact incidents at present is not possible unless it can be shown that there was sufficient force involved to cause injury. Certainly I am aware of a case that was reported in the old media in the past few weeks that expressly said as much, though I have been aware of the actual law on this for a while.

Obviously the genuine claimants thing is where my personal experience and bias may come into play but I don't view genuine claimants in a bad light. I know many people do. But I see them as the unfortunate victims of someone else's negligence.

I suppose that's the bit that I struggle with. Here you all are lambasting lawyers, claimants, insurance companies, judges and anyone else you perceive as being the wrongdoers in all of this. But no one ever mentions the people going around driving into other road users and injuring them. There's a double-think there I'm really very uncomfortable with.

Essentially, the people who are actually at the very heart of the problem - negligent (or worse) road users - aren't even mentioned in the discussion.

Beggars belief really that we wouldn't be talking about the root cause of personal injuries litigation - the people who injure others through their own negligence.

If you want to know why Irish insurers will only insure new cars, under 2 liters, with less than 110 hp, single driver, zero points, no vans, no points, over 30, under 70, nothing with the word "Sport" in it, no convertibles, no imports, no second cars, well, it is to do with Ireland's crazy legal system.

It has more to do with cartel practices and lies.

I don't really want to re-hash the debate about insurance companies and how we've come to the above situation but basically, as we have discussed umpteen times here, the existing insurance companies exclude competition from the Irish market with so-called price wars that caused the Setanta and Quinn fallout. Ultimately, the result of this play has effectively fcuked everyone in Ireland yet again because the financial crisis wiped most of the industries cash cows and this, in combination with the EU Solvency II Directive, effectively requiring insurance companies to double their cash pool to cover claims, meant that the unsuspecting and already completely bust consumer economy has to pick up the tab.

Sorry, I mean it's the lawyers' fault. We did it. Hands up.

If you shut up and pay out, you will lose €20k.
If you fight an obvious fraudulant claim, the judge will hand out €30k and add €40k legal fees on top of that.
Imposing crazy conditions is the only way insurers have some control.
No such nonsense here in Germany, where payouts are much smaller, require more proof and, for some crazy reason I can't figure out, the prevelance of whiplash is a fratcion of what it is in Ireland.
I came to Germany from Ireland insured a 2 liter diesel Cmax with 135 HP, 12 years old, with no insurance track record in Germany since 1994.
The rep from the insurance put my data in and gave me a quote of just under €700 and profusely apologised that it was so outrageously expensive.
After 3 years I am now under €500 for the same car, which will be 15 years old next year and I am expecting another discount then.

This is all very valid and I don't take any issue whatsoever with it. There is certainly a very rudimentary opportunity cost to fighting cases "all the way" or even fighting fraud. I'm not sure there's a solution to that. I'm not even sure there's a problem there that requires a solution.

What I would say is that I would expect a country of 90 million, with very different laws, social behaviours/attitudes and very, very different driving standards to have a different price for insurance. Even if the insurance companies were all engaging in honest competition.

Sonny noggs

Barrister blaming insurance companies. No surprise there.

Kivaro

hullaballoo wrote: »

I always find it amusing to see these threads, which rightly complain about fraud in personal injuries litigation - an absolutely abhorrent practice that must be dealt with to the fullest extent, albeit one that is rare in the space - but which also contain contributions that are in and of themselves completely made up, fabricated, and have no basis in fact or reality.

I had problems continuing with the rest of your post after the bit in bold.
The FBD Claims Officer in the Oireachtas last week told the joint committee that 20% of claims were fraudulent. That is no small percentage.
Unless he was lying to the Oireachtas ......

hgfj

^^^
Maybe he was...

Nermal

hullaballoo wrote: »

Whiplash can be "proven" or more accurately evidenced with MRI but it is too expensive to use in a bog-standard whiplash case where the recovery period is relatively short and there are no complications.

Total twaddle. Insurers are skimping on a €200 MRI to avoid €15K whiplash claims?

The medical evidence required for a successful whiplash claim is effectively a doctor signing a form saying 'this chap says he has whiplash'.

The whole thing is a disgusting spectacle, really.

Kivaro

Nermal wrote: »

Total twaddle. Insurers are skimping on a €200 MRI to avoid €15K whiplash claims?

The medical evidence required for a successful whiplash claim is effectively a doctor signing a form saying 'this chap says he has whiplash'.

The whole thing is a disgusting spectacle, really.

We should start with the Book of Quantum, which is totally unrealistic and should be scrapped, and we should start again.
There should be no surprise at where the elevated Irish monetary value for whiplash etc. came from, which are totally out of sync with most of Europe.

Let's start with a new realistic Book of Quantum.

Tin Foil Hat

There'd be far fewer solicitors taking these 'no-win-no-fee' cases if judges weren't so generous with other peoples' money.