Toby Morse: Welcome back to the Morse & Homes podcast. I'm Toby Morse. I'm the intelligence manager for Waitmans. And as always, I'm joined by my colleague, Paul Holmes. Paul is a senior intelligence handler in our intel team.
Paul Holmes: Ayup everybody.
So I'm pleased very pleased to say that we are once again joined by a guest, Eleanor Sturgess. Elile is a paralegal in our motor fraud team and she has a huge amount of experience of handling suspected fraudulent claims. So welcome to the podcast Ellie.
Eleanor Sturgess: Thanks, Paul, and thanks, both for having me on.
Paul Holmes: Yeah. No problem's all. So Ellie for for the benefit of our listeners, could you just maybe tell us a little bit about your career to date?
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. So I actually started my my legal career here at Wakeman's. I then went to another national firm. I was there for about nine years. And before returning to Weightmans in 2019, I'd had a brief stint in a high street firm doing family law, but it just wasn't for me. I love working in fraud because of that gotcha moment. I really enjoy it.
Paul Holmes: Yeah. I get that.
Toby Morse: Yeah. We all do. We all do. So he's dealing with suspect claims one of your favorite roles so far.
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. Definitely is. That's exactly why I returned to it. I think there's other great job in law. There's other great lines of work you can do, but for me, this is just really satisfying.
Paul Holmes: Yeah. Yeah. I get to get the same thing as well, Ali. So, I I'd probably get it. You suggested for the topic for today's session, actually, was around suspected fraudulent claims, which involves claimants who are said to be in a trust where the session and also suspected fraud claims involving lit against in person.
I think this is a great topic for the for a discussion.
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. And I know that it's technically two topics, but I think insurers can be reluctant to defend claims from trustworthy professionals and lipsticks in person. So I just wanted to discuss some some of my experience with these cases, to highlight where I think they should be defended, things to look out for, what the risks might be..
Toby Morse: Yeah. Completely really, really good, really good topic. So if we start with high risk claims involving, litigants in person, what do you think of some of the challenges for for a compensator that compensators when it comes to dealing with those claims?
Eleanor Sturgess: With litigants in person, I set up what I'd planned to say about this was the fact that, you know, the courts will be more lenient with listedants in person, which is true, and I'll talk about that again in a minute, but was, an article in the gazette last week dealing with Alistigants in person. And it it was a judge. The the commentary was about the about a particular case and the judge was basically saying how annoyed you are having frustrated. He'd be calm with with with the various breaches that since present, which he put down to the fact that they weren't represented.
So sometime, you know, the judge's patients will wear thin eventually. But I do think insurers needs to be aware that, you know, the courts are gonna be more lenient with litigants and person. And he's doing rightly so on occasion.
But for insurance purposes, it can increase the cost for the client, if it's, you know, if if the list again to person doesn't have a service witness statement you then have to issue an application. The claimant doesn't turn up with the hearing. Ordinarily, you'd think, oh, you know, I'm shaping up for a strike out here.
But they get a lot more leeway from the court.
Obviously, there's no claimant cost to consider claiming solicitor's profit cost. To consider if the claimant's not not represented, but, you know, own costs can really be driven off if you're having to do repeated hearing, and I have heard of cases requiring multiple interim hearings, because the claimant was a litigant in person.
Paul Holmes: Okay. Yeah. I can imagine being sitting in front of a courtroom and having a solicitor and being sitting there representing yourself, it must be maybe a little bit intimidating for individual. So, yeah, so so compensators should, should be aware of what proceedings would let against in person may become, more drawn out. I suspect.
Eleanor Sturgess: Definitely. And, you know, and and I'm not saying that claim all claims from listening to person should be settled, but, you know, because of that thing that the that separate thing that ensures I've got to think about but it would be foolish to think that dealing with a litigant in person is gonna be an open goal.
You know, if you foresee opportunities potentially trip the claimant up.
Still if the claim should be settled, if the claims got merits, you should be considering settlement, you know, given the potential increased cost that I just mentioned.
Toby Morse: Yeah. Makes makes complete sense, doesn't it, Ellie. We would, I mean, we see a lot of litigants in person who who are actually repeat litigators, you know, very litigious individuals. They've gone through the process before and are quite sort of determined when it comes to litigation, even if they don't follow the process as you'd expect from a professional litigator.
So often we see unexpected or unusual applications, for example.
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. Absolutely. And I suppose the good thing if you like with litigants in person is they they tend to be more likely to exaggerate and say things that simply aren't plausible, which can be helpful for our case.
We had an LVI case years ago, and the claimant, he'd he'd sought for us to claim for a full weekly like shop.
He he said he'd he'd said he'd just return from the supermarket when the accident occurred and he hit his shopping had been in the boot of his car.
So my colleague was joking that the claimant was alleging that his shopping had been vaporized.
Now, if that claimant had had representation, This solicitor definitely would have said while you like to think.
Come on. This just isn't plausible.
Toby Morse: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. No.
Paul Holmes: There can be, there can be friction between the defendant and claimant's representatives, but we should acknowledge that some claimant firms are likely to filter out some of the more spurious claims.
So, yeah, talking like it's like it's in person. I remember investigating an organized group, who were stealing high value rental vehicles which have been provided to them during the claims process. Those claimants were always a good person who were all taking advantage of a third party catch process.
Toby Morse: I remember that fraud ring as well, Paul. Yeah.
We've seen, we've seen a a number of recent cases for clients where fraudulent repair invoices and estimates have been presented by a litigancy person following. Yeah. Looks like contrived stage stage controlled accidents.
Paul Holmes: Yeah. I know. Definitely. Yeah. It's an issue through, for some of our clients at present. I've seen quite a few of those. So yeah, Ali, what what advice could you maybe provide as listeners when it comes to dealing with high risk litigants in person claims?
Eleanor Sturgess: Well, litigant and personal not identification of high risk claims and early stages key. But as I alluded to previously, I would not take a lax approach in investigations or collecting evidence just because she's dealing with the litigants and person.
The other thing is personally, I always try to keep communications with listens and person in writing as well. You don't want a situation where the claimant, especially if the reforms is telling the court that you've said something that you haven't.
Paul Holmes: Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely. And what about the suspected fraud claims involving claim it's in a job which you would normally consider trustworthy.
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. Well, frauds cuts through society, but insurers and compensators often look for claimants in a high risk profession.
This is often for the right reasons as there are a lot of data which shows the claimants in certain job types are more likely to be high risk. However, and as we've just mentioned, and as as we mentioned previously, you and I, Paul, a lot of people nowadays think it is okay a bang in an injury claim if you're involved in Lexington, whether you've been injured or not, it's just seen as, like, a little extra that you're entitled to. And I think that the cost of living crisis has exacerbated this really. As a result, we're seeing claims from people who I don't think would actually lie about anything else in their lives at all, but they just say, you know, oh, I've been in this accident might as well put in an injury claim with seeing claims from people who what we call are in angelic professions, police officers, medical professionals, etcetera.
Paul Holmes: It's just kinda like accepted, isn't it that you? It's it's just part of the claim that you have this sort of claiming.
Toby Morse: So what so what you're saying, Ali, it's just best not to trust anybody, really.
Eleanor Sturgess: Suppose it might make you quite cynical this line of work.
Toby Morse: It can do. It can do. Jumping tips for dealing with claims from people with so called angelic professions.
Eleanor Sturgess: Yeah. I do. I've got, you know, I've got that there there's a couple of things to mention about before we go into it. I just wanna preface this by when I'm for when I'm talking about the next few minutes, I'm not talking I'm talking about fraudsters. I'm not talking about these people who, you know, do great jobs society that we all need. I'm talking about people who have put in, claims that are not genuine.
So the first thing I would say to ensure is, don't be put off defending them. Of course, the worry is that that the insurers have is that the judge is not gonna wanna find a doctor or a teacher or whatever, to be lying and it's something, you know, to consider that you have to remember the judges have to visit, the concerns in their judgments. So if the evidence is there, you should absolutely continue to defend the claim.
You know, you shouldn't, you know, shy away from it just because of that concern about the the the claimant's profession. Yeah. If you have great evidence, judge is gonna have difficulty saying while that's all well and good, but the claimant is a nurse, you know, they wouldn't possibly lie. The judge will have to state in the judgment why the claimant's evidence was preferred over your compelling evidence, and their decision is likely to be appealed if they don't do that within the judgment.
Another thing I should add on is that often these claimants and again, I'm talking about the bad apples here.
I think that because of what their profession is, that we won't scrutinize their claims.
I think they think that their claims will sail through, so there is often the opportunity to get really good evidence because they, believe things like their social media bank accounts won't be checked. So I think that's a real advantage, in investigating these types of claims.
The other thing I wanted to say was just because a person is saying says that they are something doesn't necessarily mean that that it's true. We're sometimes dealing with frauds, just don't forget. So if something doesn't ring true, you should definitely look into it. For example, I had a case and on the CNF, the claimant had indicated that they were a teacher. And that was repeated when the medical report told the medical expert that they were a teacher as well. Yeah. We had really good evidence on the case.
And the client had said to me, or, you know, don't don't you worry a little bit about the fact that the claimant's a teacher Yeah.
And I'd said, well, it's not great, but, you know, look at our other evidence on this case. Yeah. I then had our insured send me copies of text messages that he'd received from the claimant following the accident.
And the claimant was, making threats and swearing, you know, in these text messages.
And it just didn't ring true to me that a teacher or any professional person, really. Which language like that to a stranger.
So on this case, on the meantime, I've successfully applied to compel the claimant's provides us with a mandate for access to personal, personnel records.
The claimant complies that order and sure enough they put down an academy as their employer although they didn't indicate that they were no longer working there.
I wrote to the school and then, I received a call from the head to say that the records were, on their way, which I thought was odd in itself that the heads had called me personally.
Paternal job to play that year, like, collect quality records and everything. But because he had furniture took the opportunity to ask the head, if the claimant was indeed to teach at the school, and he'd said no.
And I know he's explained that his school was like a specialist school with students Wow.
With quite a lot of behavior issues. And as a result, they needed extra support to be present in classrooms, to support the students in between classes. So I said, do you mean like a teaching assistant?
And I can't I can't remember the name he gave the role, but it wasn't teaching assistant either needless to say the claimant certainly wasn't a teacher. So this dishonesty, a lie that the claimant didn't even need to make that obviously, you know, helped our case too. So That would be my final piece, you know, check everything out that you're being told when you've got concerns that somebody isn't telling you the truth about one thing. They might not tell you the truth about some other things too.
Toby Morse: Fantastic. Really good. Thanks, Ellie. I think that's been really, useful.
Eleanor Sturgess: Oh, good.
Toby Morse: Thank you, Ellie. As always, thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We hope you found this episode of the Molson Home car Homes podcast. Featuring Ellie, to be useful.
As always, if you have any comments, feedback, or requests for further episodes, any feedback on our production values. If you wanted me to speak to somebody in our marketing team and see if we can get some jingles on, just let me know. And you can reach us at intelligence at weightmans dot com. Bye for now.