By: 25 October 2013

Des Hudson, the chief executive of the Law Society has called on solicitors to start helping the Society to gather evidence of bad practice by insurers to highlight the injustices suffered by accident victims.

 

He told delegates at the MASS annual conference in London on 25 October that third party capture was a major problem with many insurers still trying to get to claimants as early as possible before they can get legal advice or seek a medical opinion.

 

“We will be asking the entire profession to start gathering evidence on where there is bad practice or discrepancies [on the part of insurers] and take this to Westminster and Brussels,” said Hudson.

 

“We want to have real factual evidence that we can show to the authorities to try and reverse some of the injustices that have been done to people.”

 

He also said that the Society had been studying the lobbying methods of the insurance industry and wanted the legal profession to adopt similar strategies to try and stop the myths about the personal injury sector that were spread in the mainstream media.

 

Hudson also talked about the Jackson reforms, saying that the changes had been egregious and had left the no win-no fee model unsustainable in the medium-term.

 

He added that “the shabby deal” allegedly made between Cameron and the motor insurers in a meeting at Downing Street in February of 2012 was simply designed to make it harder for road traffic accident victims to go to court and stop “ambulance-chasing, fat cat lawyers”.

 

“It was all about making it tougher for small people to sue big insurance bodies,” he said.