Hi, a year and a half ago a driver of mine clipped his mirror on another car and scuffed the wheel but left the scene i advised him to report to the police and he did. a year ago the MIB interviewed him and contacted my insurance company and my insurance company paid out, i knew nothing of the interview or my insurance paying out any until 3 weeks ago 01.11.11 when my insurance premium came in and had doubled from 12k to 23k. This forced me to close business. Are the insurance company in breach of anything for never contacting me the policyholder, i was never given the chance to defend myself as a policyholder in respect of no damage to my vehicle and they have paid out 7 to 8k to the third party. Help please simon

Hi, a year and a half ago a driver of mine clipped his mirror on another car and scuffed the wheel but left the scene i advised him to report to the police and he did. a year ago the MIB interviewed him and contacted my insurance company and my insurance company paid out, i knew nothing of the interview or my insurance paying out any until 3 weeks ago 01.11.11 when my insurance premium came in and had doubled from 12k to 23k. This forced me to close business. Are the insurance company in breach of anything for never contacting me the policyholder, i was never given the chance to defend myself as a policyholder in respect of no damage to my vehicle and they have paid out 7 to 8k to the third party. Help please simon

Hi,

Did your diver hit the other car or not?

Yes clipped the mirror and scuffed the wheel on my vehicle.

Suggest that you obtain legal advice. Suggest that you make a subject access request to Insurers and MIB under Data protection, asking for all data/paperwork regarding the claim. Just send a letter making the request, with £10 cheque to cover the fee. Once you have all this information, hopefully a solicitor can offer an opinion. From what you have said, it sounds like a personal injury claim has been made, as well as cost of repairs. Perhaps because they could not dispute the third party claim, they just paid out and did not feel that they had any contractural or regulatory reason (FSA) to inform you of the claim progress, so you could intervene if you thought necessary. When you sign up to an Insurance contract, you do give permission to allow the Insurers to deal with third party claims. Keeping you updated, may be good practice, but whether there is any legal or other duty to do so, I am not sure. You could also check this with the FOS, by giving them a call.

Not sure why the MIB were involved, as I thought they only dealt with uninsured losses. The third party may have thought your companies vehicle was uninsured and it was sometime later your Insurers got involved, when the policy details were advised to them.

On the basis that your driver left the scene, even though reported it to the police. It wasn't reported to your insurer (your responsibility) where cleary it was deemed important enough to report to the police. The fact the MIB were involved, it was probably fault and if not fault, the driving away doesn't look good.

The insurer has a legal liability under the road traffic act to deal with a third party claim and a subrogated right to deal with your claim as they see fit. You can ask them why they didn't contact you, but that won't resolve the fact that they had to pay out. They wouldn't have done this without scrutiny, they are a business after all.

All in all I don't think you would gain much support if you went to court or the FOS.

Potentially you can pay back your insurer the amount they paid to lower the premium, this may work out cheaper, but there will no other premium considerations to take on board, that may be seprarate from the claim payout alone.

The mib were involved as the car hit did'nt get the registration or knew what had hit them it was only the fact my driver reported it the mib put two and two together, as i said their was no damage to my vehicle and my driver could see no one in the vehicle and yes driving away is'nt the right thing to do.

The mib were involved as the car hit did'nt get the registration or knew what had hit them it was only the fact my driver reported it the mib put two and two together, as i said their was no damage to my vehicle and my driver could see no one in the vehicle and yes driving away is'nt the right thing to do.

But you said your van had scuffs on the wheel though?

The MIB deal with either uninsured or untraced drivers so they were involved because your driver didn't report it properly.

You are vicariously liable for you employees actions.

Yes my vehicle did only have scuffs, which is why i would of defended myself, i did'nt explain properly the vehicle was hired by me to the driver.