All insurers will sometimes contest a claim, up to and including court, as the final arbiter. This in itself does not make NFU ‘bad’ per-se. For whatever reasons, NFU decided to contest this one and lost…. It is possible that the NFU’s customer is on some other website, saying how stupid the court’s decision was and that the judge was bamboozled by smart lawyers; the scum of the earth (I read it here).
The thing is, the judge wasn't bamboozled by smart lawyers, the case never even got to be heard, the judge just looked at the papers before him, said he couldn't understand why this had got as far as the court.
Based on the 3rd party's statement, in his opinion, there was nothing in it that would convince him that he was not at fault unless his Barrister was going to reveal something to change his mind during the hearing process. He clearly wasn't happy, and sent everyone out to try and resolve the situation without a court judgement.
This put me in a very awkward position as two offers for settlement were put to us by the 3rd party brief, the first I rejected outright, but the second I accepted on advice from my brief. I was concerned that the judge was so pissed at the other party that this was in front of him, that if I'd rejected the second offer and the full hearing had gone ahead, his angst may have come my way, he may well have settled in my favour, but not fully.
Personally, I wished he hadn't said anything at the beginning and just got on with the hearing. It would have been over quicker, and I truly believe I would have had an outright win. As it was, it dragged on for several hours and the two barristers had us all back in court three times to clarify the judges wishes. Hence, why I said it was a farce.
Just for the record, I did not say NFU was bad, I said somebody (at NFU) deserves a rocket up their arse for the decision to take this to court. If I showed you the evidence, which I can not do, I'm sure you would understand why I said this.
The representatives for my insurers, KGM, were no means faultless. For a start the contracted claim assessors where hopeless, they would not listen to a word I was telling them, and their poor decision making left me with no transport for 3 months (it took 6 months to repair my car as, due to COVID, the parts weren't available). It was only when I contacted the Claims Manager at KGM, who was brilliant, that things started moving forward.
The Solicitors that KGM provided were nearly as bad as the contracted Assessors, making numerous errors that I had to chase up, the worst being that the court I was told to attend had been closed several weeks ago, and it was going to remain closed for the foreseeable future. I only found out, a few days before the hearing, that this was the case from a Magistrate friend at the gym one morning. On contacting the solicitor about this he just sent me the notification of a few months earlier stating the closed court as the venue, and he would advise me if it changed. Last Friday I met my friend at the gym again, he confirmed the court was definitely closed and told me who to contact to confirm where the hearing would be held. This I did, I was advised that all party's had been advised of the change of venue in June, they sent me a copy of the notice which I forwarded to my solicitor telling him that unless I heard otherwise I'd be attending this other venue and that I hoped he'd notified my Barrister of the change.
Had I not had this chance meeting/chat with my friend I would have been attending a court over 20 miles away and would have lost the case due to none attendance!
