How long does an insurer have to reply to a compensation claim?

Your instructed Solicitor is not being unduly slow and neither are you being impatient – it is a frustrating situation for a claimant in your circumstances, but it would seem that all is in order.

You do need to see the claim for the motorcycle damage and your personal injury as two separate matters. The claim for the motorbike would have been an easy process for the defendants – they would simply have wanted to check on the vehicle, establish a market value and then settle that.

With regards to personal injury, I do not see there being anything other than a successful outcome given the previous admission of liability and the Police action against the 3rd party driver. Sadly, personal injury cases will take a considerably longer period of time to process and settle than a vehicle claim and your Solicitors will be working through the process at this time. Your Solicitor will have obtained your medical records – or at least requested them and that can cause a small delay in that it can take a while for the records to be released. The Solicitor will then be seeking to arrange a medical expert to interview you – with sight of your medical records – to discuss the mechanics of the accident and the injuries that you sustained/medical treatment and then examine you in order to provide a prognosis of recovery and longer term issues caused by the injuries.

It is prudent to ensure that a claimant has recovered – or recovered as much as possible – before settling a personal injury claim in order that certainty over an appropriate settlement can be known. It would seem like your claim is likely to have a substantial value when it comes to settlement given the injuries sustained.

Good luck!

Given the considerable damage to your vehicle and the fact that you rolled a number of times and at some speed, there is unlikely to be any challenge to the fact that those within the vehicle would sustain injury and therefore, claims for personal injury compensation should be accepted without challenge.

The only issue that a defendant will want to consider is the severity of any injuries claimed for, to ensure that there are no pre-existing injuries/conditions and that the claims are (in that respect) correct.

If you have yet to pursue a claim, please contact us as we can assist you. In terms of the CNF, defendant insurers will have a period of a couple of months to respond meaningfully to that.

It is very difficult when dealing with an overseas defendant who refuses or fails to cooperate with a claim. In the case of the defendant being a UK based organisation, a Solicitor may issue proceedings to bring a non-cooperating defendant to court in a bid to seek a judgement that will compel the defendant to cooperate. In a case like yours, you could issue proceedings but the overseas defendant may simply choose to ignore any hearing date and fail to attend. Whilst the courts would find against them in such a scenario, there is little that can be done.

The only glimmer of light in this matter could be to issue proceedings against the UK agent and see if gaining judgement in your favour against them moves matters on.

Have you considered instructing a specialist Solicitor to act for you in your claim? We appreciate your concerns about the legal costs, but with our No Win No Fee service, you don’t have finance the costs of making a claim – you don’t pay any costs if you don’t succeed and the majority of your legal costs can be recovered from the defendant insurer if you succeed (claimants do have to contribute up to 25% of awarded settlement should they succeed).

We often hear from people who need help after attempting to pursue a claim directly. Whilst there is no specific need in law to instruct a Solicitor, it is fair to say that people acting without specialist legal representation struggle to get fair treatment and responses from defendants. In such cases, defendants know that claimants probably don’t know their rights and are unsure about how to proceeding with a claim – especially when the defendant isn’t cooperating as they should.

A specialist Solicitor knows how to cut through these issues and will make the claims process hassle free. When a claimant has instructed a specialist to represent them, they can be sure that their rights will be upheld and that defendants will be held to account. Another very important consideration is knowing whether any offer to settle the claim is fair and at the appropriate level for any injuries or losses sustained.

If you would like to speak with our specialists about your claim and consider whether you may wish to instruct them on a No Win No Fee basis, please contact us on 01225430285 or use our website to make further enquiries.

Sadly, there is little you can do to speed up the process. Dealing with claims involving an overseas defendant are more problematic than if it were a UK defendant and the timescales are far harder to enforce. Also, Brexit it must be said has thrown a spanner in the works in terms of making the process more awkward and burdensome.

You wouldn’t be able to take the matter to court immediately as reasonable delays are acceptable (in the eyes of the court system). However if the payment were to be unduly delayed, you could then certainly seek legal support to enforce release of settlement.

Sadly, we come across this all too often – where someone who is making a claim without legal representation gets a raw deal from the defendant insurers in terms of the way that their claim is handled. It probably won’t surprise you, but specialist Solicitors get the run around from defendant insurers too, but with the weight that their position holds and their knowledge of the law and process of making a claim, a specialist personal injury Solicitor is able to hold the defendants to a tighter level of scrutiny and account than an unrepresented person often can.

You may wish to issue them with a reasonable deadline to respond to you with a decision on liability – say 21 days or similar and see if that pushes them in to action. Alternatively, you may wish to now put the claim in the hands of a specialist personal injury Solicitor – like those who act for our claimants – and instruct them to act for you on a No Win No Fee basis. If you would like to have a no obligation conversation with one of our specialist Solicitors about your claim and the current hiatus you have reached, please let us know. We’d be more than happy to assist you.

The fact that the company may not have had a response as of the expected date is not necessarily a concern and the failure to meet deadlines in claims does often rest with defendant insurers rather than the claimant side of the process. The £10k issue is also a common one and you shouldn’t necessarily worry about that as your medical evidence will (in due course) provide a clearer value as to the final likely settlement for your claim.

However, your concerns about a lack of updates and anxieties about the feedback provided by other claimants are understandable. The possibility of changing Solicitors is an option, but if you are to do so, doing it at the earliest stage of the process is most likely to make it viable for a new Solicitor. This is due to the fact that when acting on a Conditional Fee Agreement (No Win No Fee) basis, any new Solicitor does have to agree to provide an undertaking to the previous Solicitor to cover their already incurred costs, should they then succeed with the claim. As you can imagine, if a switch is attempted later in the process, the amount of cost that is then lost to a new Solicitor makes it financially unviable for a new Solicitor to take over a case. I’d say you are still in a period where costs will be minimal, so if you are to change, perhaps consider it at this point.

Obtaining an admission of liability is an important milestone in the process of claiming personal injury compensation. Essentially, the admission means that you have won the case and will be compensated for your injuries and associated costs or losses. However, the next stage of the process can take some time and much will depend on the severity of injury you have sustained, whether you have made a good recovery or if you are still in need of further medical appointments.

There is no set timescale for a claim to be settled, but once an admission of liability is in place, the claim could settle within a few months if the injuries were not too severe or if you have made a good recovery.