The benefits of paying very close attention to all details in suspicious claims

The case, in which she acted for the second party minuter, is Craig Walker Brown (pursuer) v John Armstrong (defender), Markerstudy Insurance Services Ltd (first party minuter) and Ageas Insurance Ltd (second party minuter), Sheriff A Elfallah, Paisley Sheriff Court, 7 October 2025.

The reason why two insurance companies are named in the litigation in addition to the defender is that he did not enter the action but his vehicle, said to have been involved in an incident, was insured by both insurance companies, who would have been liable to meet any award made against him.

The incident circumstances as initially claimed by the pursuer were not unusual, although it was of note that the pursuer claimed to have been driving a rare car, an Audi R8 GT Spyder, when the defender, driving a Mitsubishi Shogun, was said to have driven into the back of it at a roundabout.

Most of the £90,000 principal sum sued for was for the cost of replacement car hire, on credit terms, in addition to which claims were made for certain injuries, the cost of physiotherapy, miscellaneous expenses and inconvenience.

Our insurance clients first developed certain suspicions about the claim in their initial dealings with their policyholder and the pursuer.

When litigation was raised, our own suspicions developed, for example in the medical context -

• The pursuer’s pleadings referred to neck pain radiating to the right arm but his reporting to a physiotherapist and a consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon was of radiation to the left arm, with no mention of the right.

• The consultant orthopaedic surgeon did not examine the pursuer until more than two years after the incident, by which time the diagnosed injury was fully resolved, with claimed ongoing symptoms not attributable to the alleged incident.  ​​​​

• The consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon had access to “pre-incident” medical records, notably including various mentions of right-sided pain, but was not given access to the “post-incident” medical records. Subsequent sight of those revealed that there was no mention of the alleged incident in those, although the pursuer claimed to have consulted his GP on one occasion about it.

An early suspicion on why the driver’s and driver’s side airbags of the Audi were seen as having deployed when the impact was said to have been from the rear developed further on expert engineering evidence being obtained to the effect that, if the incident happened as initially claimed by the pursuer, that would not have caused any such deployment.

Evidence emerging during the ten days of evidence heard in court justified, and more, our suspicions, with the sheriff ultimately rejecting the pursuer’s case entirely because of three “major” and “insurmountable” difficulties with it -

• The pursuer gave oral evidence in court that he had driven around 15 miles on the day of the incident before it happened. However, “It was clear from the mileage recorded in the diagnostic data … that the Audi did not move, or at least was not driven, between 07:03 hours and 19:03 hours on that date”, with 19:03 the time when the airbags were recorded as deploying, and with the Audi not having been driven in the following minutes, hours or days either. Quite simply “If the Audi was not driven on that date, there cannot have been an accident of the type described by the pursuer.”

• “The pursuer gave evidence that he could not remember whether the airbags deployed or not and that, after the collision, he drove the Audi a very short distance to the side of the road. It was clear from all the other, incontrovertible evidence in this case that, whatever might have caused them to do so, the driver’s airbag and driver’s side airbag did in fact deploy … and that deployment would have been a significant, loud, and literally explosive event. It is not credible that the pursuer did not remember two airbags deploying and indeed drive the car afterwards with the airbags in their deployed state, without recalling that they had in fact deployed.”

• “The pursuer’s fortuitous account of the front of his car striking the roundabout appears to have been provided for the first time during proof (evidential trial). It came after the suggestion was made (in a report), at such a late stage in proceedings and against a background where the deployment of the airbags was of such controversary and importance that, in my view, it could not be regarded as coincidental or credible. I considered it had been directly influenced by (the report’s author’s) suggestion.”

For the reasons explained, this case again underscores the benefits of paying very close attention to all details in suspicious claims and of maintaining that focus throughout the claim journey.