The claimant had been injured in a road accident. The driver of the vehicle was unknown, but the insurer was known. The defendant now applied for the claim to be struck out on the basis that it had been free to avoid the policy ab initio for non-disclosure.
Held: The order stood: ‘the principles set out in Cameron are engaged and that the claimant is prima facie entitled to proceed against the third defendant as an unnamed party. It seems to me that it would be both efficacious and consistent with the overriding objective to allow the claim to go forward in that way. The entitlement of a claimant to proceed against an unnamed driver should not depend on the section 151 liability of the insurer being incontrovertibly established. That would be to draw a somewhat arbitrary distinction between cases where the claimant’s rights rested on section 151 and cases where his rights rested on the Uninsured Drivers’ Agreement / Article 75 (or some combination of the two). It would be arbitrary because both routes offer a remedy of value and both form part of an overall scheme intended to meet the UK’s obligations under the Motor Insurance Directives. Furthermore, given the time limit in section 152(2) and given also the fact that the victim of a road accident cannot know if there are matters that might lead to the avoidance of the insurance covering the vehicle which injured him, at the point of issue and/or service of the Claim Form neither he nor the court can be confident that section 151 will ultimately be engaged.’
Citations:
[2018] EWHC 738 (QB)
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Personal Injury, Road Traffic
Updated: 13 April 2022; Ref: scu.609110
