Being Sued for a Car Accident

If you've been involved in a car accident that was actually your fault, you'll know what a stressful thing it is to have to go through.

Not only do you have to deal with insurance companies asking endless questions, if you don't have fully comprehensive insurance, you might find out that you have to shell out a hefty sum to get your car repaired, and if it's written off, you might find yourself struggling to replace the car you had with one of a similar standard.

Add this to the mental, physical, emotional stress and guilt that you can suffer if involved in an RTA, and you start to get the picture.

However, for some people, things actually get worse when they find out that they are being sued as a result of the accident.

Different Circumstances

Obviously it's difficult to generalise on a subject like this because every situation is different - as is every insurance policy - but what should you do if you find a letter telling you that you are being taken to court nestling on your doormat?

Get on the Phone and Tell your Insurers

The first thing you need to do is to inform your insurance company and advise them about the claim. You should have done this anyway when you were involved in the accident, and it is their job to deal with this kind of thing for you. Any letters and correspondence that you receive from the other party (or parties) involved in the incident should be forwarded onto your insurers directly so that they can look into it further for you and help you find a resolution.

I Thought my Insurers were Dealing with This

It might be the case that your insurance company is already in discussions with the other party, but the person making the claim may have launched a direct proceeding because your insurer is causing delays.

If they don't feel that the insurance company is responding to their claim in a positive way, they may decide to come to you direct and essentially intimidate you, by threatening to take you to court. Alternatively, they may feel that your insurer is trying to skirt around the issue and that this is their only way of pushing things forward to an acceptable conclusion.

This is why you need to contact the insurance company directly. You may find that they have found a responsible and impartial witness who is going to testify via a witness statement that the person making the claim was actually the driver at fault in the incident, or that the other party have made a false accident report and the witness is needed to confirm your version of what happened.

Alternatively, they may be questioning the amount of damage and repair being claimed for - they will have independent parties looking at the circumstances surrounding the accident and descriptions of what happened and what damage was done to the vehicles.

If this seems inexplicably high, they may suspect the other driver is trying to defraud them by 'beefing up' their claim - making out that the damage was worse than it was. In some cases, insurance companies have challenged damage reports only to find out that something that happened long before the accident in question has been included in the accident report - such as damage from a previous bump - and if this happens, they will want to investigate further.

So I Don't Have to go to Court?

Probably not. It's probably just a technique to force the hand of your insurance company into acting faster or an attempt to insinuate that the other party is so convinced they have a winning case that they are not afraid to take things further. So it's likely that things will carry on at their own natural pace - which with insurance companies, is always a long, slow, drawn out affair.

However you do need to be aware that there is a chance that if your insurance company cannot come to a settlement agreement, then the person making the claim against you can issue the claim against you directly, and that would end up with you needing to go to court to testify. This is really worst case scenario territory here and very unlikely to occur, but if it did, the court would make a decision based on the evidence that is available to them at the time. If they were to find against you, you should still be protected by your insurance company.