Question for BiB, any offence commited here?
Discussion
(sorry for the long post!) I'm hoping one of our plod friends can give some advise on a ongoing insurance claim I'm mixed up in.
About 6 month ago I was a backseat passanger in my cousins girl friends car, my wife was in the front passanger seat & my cousin next to me in the back.
We were driving home from a pub in the town centre & turned left into a side road which had a taxi parked up immediately on the left of the road (dodgy in iteslf being no more than 6 foot from the junction). As we took over it the back seat passanger (pi$$ed off her head)of the taxi flung her door open into the passanger door of our car casuing a fair bit of damage to the body work & window.
The taxi driver initially accepted fault at the scene & practically begged us to let his mate fix our car & not to go through insurance as it would wack up his already heavy premium, we weren't having any of this though & wanted to go the official route as to be honest none of us would trust a taxi driver.
Now 6 month later after lots of chasing around between insurnace companies the taxi driver has finally responded saying the door was open before we turned the corner & as such its our fault. he has a witness statement also saying this. The things are -
1 - His witness is a male, I know there were no male witnesses at the scene (apart from the taxi driver, my cousin & myself), the only males to arrive were his taxi driving mates who heard him call the crash in on the radio, they arrived after the crash though. Trouble is this is hard for us to prove, we all know it but convincing someone else is difficult.
2 - We have photo's of our car after the crash. They clearly show no damage to the front of our car, it is all on the side door. If his version of events was true the damage would be on our front wing/bonnet/bumper if indeed any occured at all, the front bumper would have made impact not the passanger door & may not have been damaged as his door would have give way first! Also his door would must likely have been heavily buckled/removed & certainly wouldn't have been closeable as it was after the crash. He doesn't know we have these photo's yet.
Question is if he refuses to budge on this I'd assume it would goto a claims court or something & do we have a good chance of winning this one? Is he committing any offence by using a false statement & is it worth us pushing this line straight away?
About 6 month ago I was a backseat passanger in my cousins girl friends car, my wife was in the front passanger seat & my cousin next to me in the back.
We were driving home from a pub in the town centre & turned left into a side road which had a taxi parked up immediately on the left of the road (dodgy in iteslf being no more than 6 foot from the junction). As we took over it the back seat passanger (pi$$ed off her head)of the taxi flung her door open into the passanger door of our car casuing a fair bit of damage to the body work & window.
The taxi driver initially accepted fault at the scene & practically begged us to let his mate fix our car & not to go through insurance as it would wack up his already heavy premium, we weren't having any of this though & wanted to go the official route as to be honest none of us would trust a taxi driver.
Now 6 month later after lots of chasing around between insurnace companies the taxi driver has finally responded saying the door was open before we turned the corner & as such its our fault. he has a witness statement also saying this. The things are -
1 - His witness is a male, I know there were no male witnesses at the scene (apart from the taxi driver, my cousin & myself), the only males to arrive were his taxi driving mates who heard him call the crash in on the radio, they arrived after the crash though. Trouble is this is hard for us to prove, we all know it but convincing someone else is difficult.
2 - We have photo's of our car after the crash. They clearly show no damage to the front of our car, it is all on the side door. If his version of events was true the damage would be on our front wing/bonnet/bumper if indeed any occured at all, the front bumper would have made impact not the passanger door & may not have been damaged as his door would have give way first! Also his door would must likely have been heavily buckled/removed & certainly wouldn't have been closeable as it was after the crash. He doesn't know we have these photo's yet.
Question is if he refuses to budge on this I'd assume it would goto a claims court or something & do we have a good chance of winning this one? Is he committing any offence by using a false statement & is it worth us pushing this line straight away?
I'm not plod, but a friend of mine was involved in an accident, which was the other drivers fault, although there were no witnesses at the time to prove this.
A couple of weeks later, the other driver 'finds' some witnesses and lodges a claim against my mate. He refuses to allow his insurance company to back down and eventually, they get a date to go to court.
As the court date approaches, the other driver offers to settle 50:50 but my mate still refuses. Two days before the court date, the other driver offers to settle in full.
Obviously the 'witnesses' didn't want to stand up in court and lie (that's perjury isn't it?).
If I was you, I would go to court if necessary.
A couple of weeks later, the other driver 'finds' some witnesses and lodges a claim against my mate. He refuses to allow his insurance company to back down and eventually, they get a date to go to court.
As the court date approaches, the other driver offers to settle 50:50 but my mate still refuses. Two days before the court date, the other driver offers to settle in full.
Obviously the 'witnesses' didn't want to stand up in court and lie (that's perjury isn't it?).
If I was you, I would go to court if necessary.
Yup, perverting the course of justice. The witness would require big balls and most likely will be tied in knots by a decent brief.
A former business partner/boss got sent down for 6 months for something similar (admittedly he had pissed off the local DC considerably and he went after the lying fvcker).
A former business partner/boss got sent down for 6 months for something similar (admittedly he had pissed off the local DC considerably and he went after the lying fvcker).
definitely follow through - something very similar happened to me - he suddenely created a 'taxi mate' who happened to be coming the other way and saw me reverse into him (which wasn't what hapened)....they asked me to settle, I laughedand said Id see em in court. I turned up; surprise, surprise they didnt. end of story....
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