After our accident, the agony of a payout battle

Accidents are traumatic enough without insurance companies adding to the pain. I spent almost five years battling with one after my husband and I were seriously injured by a car.

It should have been a straightforward case. After all, there was never any doubt over liability. We were walking home one summer's evening, my husband Mike pushing baby Joseph in his pram, when a car mounted the pavement and ploughed into us. Thankfully Joseph was not hurt, although his pram was a write-off. Mike, however, had life-threatening injuries; I broke both wrists.

That happened in May 1998. In November of that year the driver was convicted and sentenced. End of story for her. However, for us it was only the beginning.

We already knew a good solicitor, who was experienced in such matters. But clearly the whole area of choosing someone can be a minefield, with a plethora of personal injury specialists touting their business. Many operate a no win-no fee policy, which may sound like a good deal, but do you really want to give a sizeable chunk of compensation away? Our solicitor, David, made it clear from the outset that he would claim back his own costs from the driver's insurers, Bell Direct (a division of Admiral), without also taking a chunk of our much-needed settlement.

As I spoke to David from my hospital bed, he gave me the first piece of advice - to keep a list of items for our 'special' damages claim, that is the extra costs incurred by us or monies lost because of the accident. This included replacing the clothes cut off us in casualty, car trips to and from the hospital, prescription charges, phone calls, and - most important in our case - reimbursing Mike's lost income. As a computer contractor, no work meant no money.

We were fortunate that both families provided the care we needed at home free - albeit with considerable disruption to their lives - but we decided to claim something for their services and travel costs so that one day we could hopefully repay them in some way. This was one of the matters hotly contested by Bell.

Mike's employment situation was another stumbling block. We ran a computer consultancy at the time and had an annual contract at a fixed weekly rate - nothing complicated about that. But Bell must have wasted hours and hence hundreds of pounds of legal fees as it attempted to chip away at this figure.

A year after the accident Mike went back to work and we submitted a fairly definitive list of our special damages. We knew it was still too early to put a figure on our 'general' damages - compensation for our injuries and any effect they might have on future life. The more serious the injury, the more likely the possibility that a new problem will present itself, so patience is definitely a virtue here.

It would be tedious to go into any detail about the next few years. Apart from the sweetener of an interim payment, they were characterised by frustration at unanswered letters, faxes and phone calls sent by our solicitor to Bell. When David actually found a person at the end of the phone, it was often to hear that due to the complexity of our case, it was being handed over to someone else. This happened three times.

Finally it ended up in the hands of the company's own lawyers. David told us with relief that at last he was talking to someone who spoke the same language. But it was still another 18 months - via yet another set of lawyers - before it was over.

Two years after the accident, David decided that the time was right for us both to undergo medical examinations. We were amazed to find that the doctor who saw us was still waiting to receive our medical files from Bell. It was not until five months after our appointments that he finally received them and was able to write his reports.

In April 2001, with the three-year limitation period expiring, David issued proceedings in the High Court. It had always been his belief that a clear-cut case such as ours could be solved without the spiralling costs and emotional upheaval of going to court - and we still hoped this would be so. But perhaps the final insult was when we learnt a few months later that, due to a technicality in the posting date of an official document, Bell had gone to the High Court to attempt to throw out our case altogether. Bell lost, but appealed against the decision.

I doubt solicitors would recommend their clients contact insurance companies directly, but at that point we were so incensed that we wrote to the head of Admiral, expressing astonishment that it could behave as it had when, were it not for its incompetence, the case might have been settled long before. Perhaps it touched a nerve somewhere, as it changed its mind and decided not to appeal.

With our date in court approaching, we accepted an offer. Were we pleased with it? We had hoped for a little more, but it would have been foolish to risk what we had already achieved.

An Admiral spokesman apologised for its handling of the claim and admitted it may have contributed to the delay in reaching a settlement. 'The fact that our handlers were themselves ... held up by the time it has taken for them to receive some of the documentation they requested does not excuse the failure to respond in a timely fashion to some of your solicitor's letters,' he wrote.

To anyone in a similar situation, I would recommend going straight to the top, rather than waiting for your solicitor all the time. It was a tactic we used more than once and it did get the ball rolling, even if only to get stuck in the rough again. Why should we sit back and accept the fact that 'these things take a long time'? All that attitude does is make people desperate and perhaps accept less than the sum to which they are entitled.