Law Society stands up to insurers in advertisement row

New Law Society President Nick Fluck has told the Association of British Insurers (ABI) that it has no plans to drop its 'Don't Get Mugged by an Insurer' advertising campaign after the body wrote to the Society calling for it to be withdrawn.

ABI director general Otto Thoresen has called the campaign a “gross error of judgment” and described it as “little more than public name-calling” in a letter to Fluck this week.

In response, as reported by Litigation Futures, Fluck wrote back to Thoresen pointing out that the ABI was itself guilty of name-calling, having referred to lawyers as “ambulance chasers” on a number of occasions.

“We do not consider the campaign to be a gross error of judgment,” he wrote, “but rather that it communicates an important ongoing message to consumers. I have no plans to abandon it”.

The escalation of the row between the two bodies coincides with the latest figures released by the ABI which say that in 2012 insurers detected 124,292 bogus or exaggerated insurance claims, the equivalent of 2,390 a week. The value of these frauds is estimated to be £1.1 billion – or £21 million uncovered every week.

Of these, it said, dishonest motor insurance claims were the most costly, with savings of £614 million made from the 42,700 dishonest claims made under personal and commercial motor policies.

Mark Dugdale