Understanding Claims

How many people have heard me and other say “make a claim” when they are treated unfairly by so called authority who often abuse their positions by overstepping their perceived authority or deliberately lying to us, or threaten us with things they know have no teeth in law or elsewhere, and why do I say make a claim? Because in many low value claims, you have a greater chance of winning.
To understand this we have to understand how their system works and this is simple; MONEY, and any insurer always wants to pay out as little as possible and in many cases they simply pay out because this is the cheapest option for their balances on paper.

When you make a claim it is a “civil claim” as this is often a civil matter and not a criminal claim, it is more accurately called a “civil tort” as this is a civil wrongdoing done to you by a party or parties and you have suffered some form of loss from it, these losses are not confined to money as they can be multiple things such as a loss of good character, a loss of freedom, and even a psychological effect caused by this incident or incidents which may arise.

Every company has something called “public liability insurance” and the po-lice and councils, and any other Government sanctioned organisation has to have this insurance by law, and this is an insurance designed solely to pay out in the event that they are liable for anything occurring by any of their employees or even contracted staff to a third party (you) under something called “vicarious liability” which in law stems from something called the Master servant relationship.
In its basic form it means that if the Master gives the servant an order to do something which is wrong and the servant does it; the aggrieved or injured party can make a civil claim on the Master and not the servant as the Master gave the order to the servant and the servant carried out the order to the detriment of someone else.

If we translate this into business speak we see that companies now have people termed as those “with significant control” and these people are defined in law as the Masters, and if an order comes from a person with significant control either directly, or through a chain of command such as a business hierarchy then the company becomes liable.
If we look at a real world example: council takes over parking responsibilities and employs 10 parking wardens and to cover their costs they have to issue 5 parking tickets per day, a senior accountant does the figures and works this out as the costs of their department as an entirety which includes employing them, the accountant gives these figures to the business manager who is a person with significant control. Business manager then makes the decision to issue 6 tickets per employee, per day to cover future costs and other losses, they go to the head of environmental services and give an order to the head of environmental services to implement the issuing of 6 tickets per day, per warden and the head of environmental services passes this order to the head of parking services who issues these orders to frontline staff.

Hopefully everyone will now understand vicarious liability and chain of command.

Knowing who an organisations insurers are is vital as you never make a civil claim for damages directly to the organisation concerned, you always make the claim directly to THEIR INSURERS and every organisation has to provide you with their public liability insurers details upon demand.

Your civil claim goes in and hits the insurer’s desk; next they will evaluate it using the cheapest employees that they can, these employees may cost an insurer around £30 per hour, per employee they use on this case in this initial form, your claim.

This claim will be evaluated for merit, if you have video evidence or other irrefutable evidence of wrong doing they will move to settle immediately using something called an “ex gratia payment” which is a payment made to someone without them accepting liability, and this is crucial to understand as an ex gratia payment is made without admitting liability and in full and final settlement of the claim and is defined as a “good will payment” which is contradictory and double speak designed to deceive you.
This is the cheap option, if they go to court they may lose, particularly with irrefutable evidence against the organisation, if an employee has to spend two full days working on an irrefutable claim this is 16 hours at £30 per hour which is £480 in employee time alone, then of course there are countless letters to send which adds paper, envelopes, and postage; so they offer you £500 in compensation and save themselves time and money as an employee can deal with this in less than one hour and move onto other claims and deal with them.

If you have a strong case they will almost likely offer you a straight ex gratia payment as above if it is a claim for less than £1000-1500 depending on the insurer. In some cases the payment offered in compensation may be higher than this, in which case they will offer a lower amount and hope that you will agree to it, if you do not agree they will usually haggle with you for a final figure which will be less than what is called their “yield figure” which is the maximum amount they will normally pay out without much quibbling.

If you have a weak case or a claim for a much higher value then things become less certain as they will pay higher paid and more experienced staff to assess your case and if the chances of defending it are above 50:50 or even 60:40 with some insurers; they swing into action and scrutinise your willingness to pursue your claim and your financial abilities.
What insurance do you have? Do you have motor insurance with a legal cover with a £100,000 limit, do you have home insurance with legal protection of £150,000, and do you hold a “before the fact insurance policy” with a £250,000 limit; then they will look at what assets you own and do you own your own home and what is its value, if it is valued at £200,000 they will add this together and this gives you a final financial asset value of £700,000 which can be used against them and can be used to buy you some pretty damned good legal services to use against them.

This also works against you, if you have a house valued at £200,000 then this becomes an asset they can claim against and they will often defend any claim and throw considerable resources into defending your claim against them with vigour; safe in the knowledge that they can claim an asset with a value of £200,000 if they defend the claim successfully. Other assets may also be taken into account, for example, if you own a car valued with a TRADE VALUE of £30,000 this adds to their pot of assets they can claim against which raises your asset value to £230,000 and they will also consider other assets such as stocks and shares and indeed anything with a value which you own.
This is called the final asset figure or amount and if all your assets total £250,000 they will look to spend much less than this if they try to defend a claim and this is for several reasons, the main one being money, if you lose a case they will seize your assets and sell them off, they will use other professionals to do this and this incurs charges, if they auction your car they pay an auction fee and the costs of a company to repossess your car and any storage charges. If they take your home they will have to pay a valuer to value it, a security company to secure the seized property, and then an auction cost if they auction it off, or an estate agents fee if they sell it privately, and all these costs add up.

Similarly; if they think you will take your claim to its full extent, which as a civil tort or claim is all the way to the High Court, they will have to employ the services of a solicitor and a barrister they will often use a “negotiated settlement” as the costs spiral. Costs of an employed (on the books) solicitor employed by the insurance company may be around £200 per hour and if they have to employ the services of a decent barrister this will cost them upwards of £1000 per hour, and of course solicitors and barristers have a team of people around them with varying costs, but they will all need paying.
In addition to this the legal team will need to do a lot of research and in almost all cases they will need information from other companies and all these companies charge for obtaining this information and charge the legal team for this information and all these costs are added up.

In general terms a cost of dealing with a simple unlawful arrest and unlawful detention where the case goes to a magistrates court, then to crown court for an appeal, and then onto a claim against the po-lice will be in the region of £20-30,000 as there will be the cost of the High Court resources, witnesses, and a host of other ad hoc expenses; complex cases can run into £millions, so keeping it simple is the key to success.

Thanks assassin, keep the good work going.