Fundamental Dishonesty – A warning to Personal Injury Fraudsters

Fundamental dishonesty occurs where a Claimant is untruthful about some aspect or their entire claim for personal injury.

Section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act was introduced on 13 April 2015, specifically in relation to personal injury proceedings. This statute states that where a claim is found to be fundamentally dishonest in any way the court must dismiss the whole claim even if there is some genuine element, unless to do so would cause “substantial injustice.”

Allegations of this nature are becoming more and more popular from Defendant firms and recent cases have served as a clear warning to Claimants that the consequences of being found guilty of fundamental dishonestly are severe.

Earlier this week at Bradford Crown Court a 41 year old woman admitted to a fraud charge after staging an accident with the help of two others. Ms Ashraf was seen on CCTV tripping over a crate of orange juice in a local supermarket shortly after two accomplices had placed it in position.

Ms Ashraf claimed injuries to her shoulder, shin, calf and hip to the value of £3,000.00. She did not contact a solicitor about her claim until 9 months after the accident in the hope that any CCTV evidence would have been destroyed.

Luckily a suspicious member of staff held on to the video footage which clearly showed the claimant stumbling on the crate without even falling to the ground and ‘limping’ out of the store. The footage also shows her two accomplices moving the crate into to her way ready for her to trip over. One even took photographs of the crate before leaving the store.

Ms Ashraf was given a 21 month suspended prison sentence for making the bogus claim.

To speak to one of our expert personal injury solicitors, please call us on 01202 525333 or email at david.mcwilliam@ellisjones.co.uk.