Personal injury solicitor lifts lid on insurer’s case auctions
Published: 01/06/2012
A Chesterfield-based personal injury law firm has launched a campaign after “lifting the lid” on insurance companies who are auctioning off personal injury cases to the highest bidder.
Spencers Solicitors are hoping the campaign will help rid the industry of this “questionable and dehumanising” practice. It claims the cost of these cases is likely influenced by degree of injury sustained, something the firm describes as “essentially putting people’s misery up for sale to the highest bidder”.
John Spencer is the Director of the solicitors:
“The auctioning of personal injury claims is yet another representation of just how morally bankrupt the personal injury system is in the UK, and is a distasteful dehumanisation of the suffering of injured people.
“Although such auctions may be a perfectly legal, and on the face of it a commercially astute, way to conduct business in this industry, we believe it is ethically questionable as well as morally repugnant.
“Sadly, such practices are symptomatic of our times, whereby financial gain and profiteering by all players within the current PI system – insurers, claims management companies and solicitors among them – have been put far above the rights and needs of injured persons.”¹
While the selling of personal injury claims by insurance companies is nothing new, the timing of this discovery is rather poignant given insurers recent claims regarding the PI industry and its impact on inflated premiums.
Insurance companies have continually pleaded innocence in the current battle surrounding PI claims and their effect on premiums. However this revelation suggests insurers have a very definite role in the existing PI landscape as John Spencer highlights:
“This fundamental misstep is not only a direct threat to access to justice for injured persons, it is a key reason behind the eye-opening escalation of motor insurance premiums for all.”¹
Content correct at time of publication