7:00am Tuesday 10th March 2009

People have the right to make a claim

IT is a fundamental right of people who have suffered injury or loss to make a compensation claim or other remedy that will attempt, as best as possible, to place that person in a position as if that injury or loss had not occurred.

Such fundamental rights to be compensated are often denied to ordinary people who have legitimate and honest claims due to insurance companies unjustifiably denying the claim.

Take, for example, the mother and child who were both passengers in a car accident and who were accused of not being in the car at the time of the accident, or the insurance company that did not accept that a couple who were going out for an evening meal with friends were involved in an accident at all.

Both these cases are real and, sadly, went to trial with all the stress they had to deal with to get the justice they deserved.

It is also a suspicion among personal injury solicitors like me that the insurance companies have stigmatised as "suspicious" particular claimants from particular ethnicities and claims arising out of particular towns and cities.

No doubt the recent conviction of a claims company director and his associates involved in manufacturing fraudulent claims from Bolton, which is described as a "hotspot" town by them, will make the insurance companies wary of accepting legitimate claims from Bolton and other parts of the North West.

But let them not forget that making a claim is a long established principal and right in English law and they should not make excuses to refuse to deal with claims wherever they come from and whoever makes them.

Nasir Hafezi