Waste of money. (Compensation culture)

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	Compensation culture
Date:	16/03/01 (481 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Valid claims miss out.

If you switch on a television today, you can be almost certain at some point to see some adverts. These adverts vary in content, design and most of all, the product that they are advertising. An increasingly common type of advert that is starting to crop up however is adverts which advertise companies which claim to give you money.

On the face of it this seems like a good thing. What could possibly be wrong with being given money? Well the problem is that you have to get involved in some kind of accident before they’ll pay you. On the face of it this still seems like quite a good deal to me; fall over and cut your arm and you’ll receive thousands of pounds compensation. Perfect? Not quite.

A recent advert on television featured a young boy called Declan Swan. He was involved in an obviously harrowing accident in a playground which has left his needing to wear glasses for the rest of his life. He is obviously very upset about this; so upset and mentally scarred in fact, that he feels the need to plaster his ugly mug all over my television! What I don’t understand is why people like this seek compensation.

If he was involved in a car accident, loss of a relative or something similar then maybe I would be willing to accept that he has a valid claim. But an accident in a playground? By playing in a playground you can expect your life to be in danger, especially considering some of the primary school kids locally. Surely if he plays in a playground and gets injured, it shouldn’t be up to anyone else to pay him money.

Insurance costs are high enough for most things without having to worry against public liability cover in case someone happens to trip over there own feet. Another example of compensation being taken too far is an event which someone relayed to me a few weeks ago. Apparently a student at a school had been on school site well outside school hours, so he was in effect trespassing. He was amusing
himself by climbing up a wall. He then proceeded to fall off it and injure himself. So, what does he do after this? Get prosecuted for trespassing? Not likely! Instead he decides that with a little help from some kind solicitors he’s going to sue the school. If the accident had happened inside school hours when he actually had permission to be on the school site then he could have a valid claim but the fact that he wasn’t supposed to even be there makes the case ridiculous.

Adverts in the past have featured people that have poured hot tar on their arm, tripped at works or dropped objects on their feet. These are mundane everyday accidents and are in no way the fault of anyone but the individual. If I slip over whilst playing tennis I don’t automatically sue the tennis club, so why should these other people sue their bosses?

Of course, it’s the insurance companies that have to pay out the compensation payments. They have to pay £30,000 to people that trip over, so where do they make their money from? Well the truth is that they make their money from normal people that buy insurance. House insurance, car insurance and public liability cover are all remarkably expensive considering that most people will never have to make any claims on any of them. I just happen to run tennis coaching sessions in my spare time at Keyworth Tennis Club and countless committee meetings were dragged on and on by people discussing the fact that I have no insurance. The thing is though that over the last 18 months, I haven’t had a single pupil injure himself or herself in any way. Yet for me to get insurance cover it would be costing me around a thousand pounds a year, which is obviously far too much for me to afford. The reason it’s so high is because of people like Declan Swan who are intent on suing everybody that they possibly can in order to gain some money. Insurance companies, employers and even home-owners are living in fear of
being sued.

Of course, it’s not just insurance like this that’s far too expensive. Car insurance for someone of my age costs a preposterous sum of money. Even on the most basic of cars, I’d have to pay around a thousand pounds just for the most basic insurance. This is supposedly because as a young male I am at risk of crashing into another car, hitting a pedestrian or wiping out the entire population of human beings in the northern hemisphere in a cataclysmic motoring accident. It’s particularly frustrating because of the fact that for females, it costs about half as much. And who has the reputation for being the worst drivers?!!!

People that have valid compensation claims are fine with me but they often seem to get very little money. A case recently was about a person that used to go to South Wolds School who had leukaemia and was coming to the end of his treatment. Then, at the last stage of his treatment, the hospital made a blunder which slowly paralysed him, eventually leading to death. In this case, I think that his parents had a valid claim for compensation. How much are they likely to get? Approximately £3000 because this lad had nobody depending upon him. If he was married with kids apparently his wife would have been able to make a much larger claim.

People like Declan Swan are taking valuable money away from people that really need it. Compensation isn't just limited to accidents though. I think that if you're a victim of an assault on the street, you should get compensation. I don't know whether this is actually happening at the moment, but if you do get assaulted on the street, it will have an affect on your life.

It's frustrating for people like me who aren't blessed with having millions of pounds to spare because it's people like me that end up paying for other people to get money. Where's the justice in that? I would much rather see people that make massive cl
aims on their insurance premiums have their premimum prices hiked up to make a reflection. Maybe this would discourage people from making claims just for the sake of it.

Companies like Claims Direct offer a no win, no fee service which is designed solely to entice customers into using their service. I would be interested to know how much they have to pay if they do win their case, but I'd guess they'd still be making a lot of money out of a successful compensation claim. I think that as more and more companies like this emerge, we will see more and more compensation claims and it will eventually get to the stage where you can't do anything without being sued.

The whole concept of people seeking compensation for tripping over pales into insignificance when compared with the case above. One person dies, the other gets a sore arm. Who gets the most money? Declan Swan; my heart bleeds for you.

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