Grigor & Young LLP, Solicitors, use Moray Claims as a trading name in their business of dealing with personal injury compensation claims for clients. Grigor & Young have offices in Elgin and Forres, Moray.
Personal injury compensation claims arising from road traffic accidents are usually against insurers of the driver who was to blame for the accident.
If that driver was uninsured or is untraced, the claim may be against the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.
Injuries resulting from road traffic accidents can happen in many different ways.
- You may have been the driver of a car where another vehicle pulled out of a side road when it was not safe for them to do so and you could not avoid a collision.
- You may have been a pedestrian who was knocked down by a vehicle while you were crossing the road.
- You may have been a pedal cyclist or motorcyclist hit by a car at a junction or on a roundabout.
If we take on your claim at G&Y, it will be via one of the following three funding methods.
Legal aid
Whether you qualify for legal aid depends upon your financial circumstances.
If you qualify for legal aid, we will give close consideration to using that as the funding mechanism for the claim though we will also discuss with you the other options mentioned below.
Note that, if your claim is successful under any form of Scottish legal aid, you will receive 100% of your compensation. The legal aid rules mean it is not permissible for your solicitor to take any form of Success Fee as a deduction from your compensation.
“Before the event” (BTE) insurance
BTE insurance is a type of legal expenses insurance which you may have attached, for example, to buildings or contents insurance. People quite often have this type of legal expenses insurance cover without realising that they have it.
We will ask you to do a check to see if you have any such insurance policies in place.
We will go over them with you, if they exist, and we will contact the relevant BTE insurers on your behalf. This will not cost you anything. We will find out whether the policy would provide cover in the circumstances of your case.
It is known as “before the event” insurance because it’s insurance you had taken out before the date of your accident (the accident being the “event” in the BTE acronym).
The type of insurance we look at next (“after the event” insurance) can generally only be taken out once a check has been made for BTE insurance policies and none has been found to exist.
If your claim fails while it is covered under BTE insurance, there will be no charge or loss to you. If your claim is successful with the benefit of BTE insurance, you will receive 100% of your compensation, either as that is negotiated and agreed with the other side or as it is determined by a court.
“After the event” (ATE) insurance
This is the type of insurance associated with most “no win-no fee” arrangements for personal injury claims.
This insurance is required because it’s not generally sufficient reassurance to you for your own solicitors to say that you will not have to pay anything to them if your claim fails. If your claim is unsuccessful after a court action has been raised, there is a risk that you may have to pay some or all of the other side’s costs. This risk is significantly reduced following the introduction of qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) in Scotland but the risk is not eliminated by QOCS.
If conducting your claim through Grigor & Young, we will take out ATE insurance through an insurer called ARAG.
Where your injury relates to a road traffic accident, the total insurance premium payable to ARAG will depend upon the level of damages/compensation you receive.
- Above £1,000 and up to £100,000, the policy premium is £89.60. In that scenario, Grigor & Young will pay the full policy premium. You receive 100% of your compensation.
- Above £100,000, the policy premium is £1,064. In that scenario, you and Grigor & Young will each pay one half of the policy premium – i.e. £532. That amount will be deducted from your compensation on conclusion of the claim in order to meet your one half share.
We (G&Y) have a general policy of meeting the cost of the ATE premium ourselves where the accident happened in Moray and/or the client resides in Moray.
As you can see, however, this does not apply in all circumstances. It does not apply where the value of your road traffic accident claim exceeds £100,000.
But we still consider ourselves to be “good value”.
It is worth drawing attention to the fact that if, say, a road traffic accident injury claim settled for £110,000 then having to pay £532 towards the policy premium represents a loss of about 0.5% of your compensation.
This is an almost negligible percentage when you consider that many providers of services for no win-no fee personal injury compensation claims will expect to take 20% of your compensation as a success fee.
See the article here if you’re not sure how it is usually possible for Grigor & Young to run a personal injury claims service without charging you anything (or much).
Get in touch for more specific details from us.
Should you have any questions about the details provided in this article or if you would like to have a more detailed discussion about a possible personal injury compensation claim based upon a road traffic accident, please get in touch.
All initial enquiries are free and without obligation to take the matter further with us. Contact Peter or Marie on 01343 544077 or send us a Free Online Enquiry.
