Solicitors contributing to Ireland's Insurance Fraud Culture

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.