When your third-party insurance claim gets ignored, what are your legal options? Follow this comprehensive guide to understand your rights and the steps you can take to resolve your claim in South Africa. File photo.
Nicola Mawson
Joel Kopping’s vehicle was stationary on the freeway due to traffic coming to a standstill when a truck belonging to Titanic Trucking changed lanes into his car. There was no damage to the truck, and some R34 000 in repairs were needed to fix Kopping’s vehicle.
Kopping decided to claim as a third party as he felt he was not at fault and was not insured. Claiming as a third party also means no excess if you are insured.
Claim Help provides some information on this process: “It is important to note that as a third party, you are not necessarily eligible to claim directly from the responsible party’s insurer. Instead, you should make a direct claim from the responsible party, who will in turn hand over any correspondence and legal documents to her insurer.”
Having contacted Titanic Trucking, its director, Brendin Moodley, through a series of WhatsApps, informed Kopping that he would review footage from the dashcam and revert. Subsequently, he asked Kopping for quotes, which Kopping submitted.
Then, there was radio silence for a month and Moodley turned disappearing messages on. In one WhatsApp, which Kopping managed to save, Moodley said: “We have informed our insurers and I will proceed with the claim once I have all the information” referring to quotes and a short statement. Moodley also stated: “And once again our sincere apologies for this unfortunate incident.”
This WhatsApp message is in Personal Finance’s possession, which tried on several occasions to secure comments from Moodley without success. However, he subsequently contacted Kopping to indicate that he had received our requests for comment.
“I have received your quotations. Will forward this to insurers as discussed. I have also just seen that I received emails from a [sic] Nicola Mawson. I take it that you have engaged her to write to us. As I am not a lawyer, I will forward this as well to the insurers to respond further,” Moodley said.
Should Moodley not resolve the issue, the question then arises as to what to do when the third party doesn’t come to the party.
According to Legal Wise, a person alleging negligence must show that the other driver did not act reasonably in the circumstances and that the driver should have been able to foresee the damages they caused and taken reasonable steps to prevent such damages. These are some examples of negligent driving it provided on its website:
There is a legal recourse.
If the damage was under R20 000, which it isn’t, but if it was, Kopping could go to the Small Claims Court. The documents for this are freely available from www.justice.co.za through Googling the term “small claims court letter of demand”.
However, he would also have to ensure that a letter of demand, followed by a summons, were both received by the third party, which becomes tricky. There are tools to find their addresses. In this case, the address is in Cape Town, which is on the company website.
For those who have a name and a copy of the other driver’s license (always get that), can hunt down a physical address using investigative websites, such as Legal City, which provides access to deeds. Unfortunately, you need to know which deeds office in which to search.
To get around this, you can have a look and see if the person is a director of a company. Addresses are captured there.
However, they may not be recent. Or the person who apparently caused the accident may not be a director of a company. So, get all this information at the scene of the crash.
There is the option of hiring a lawyer or finding a university that offers legal aid. These could, however, prove to be too costly.
In such a case, Kopping could gather up all the documents he needs, which would also include photos of the vehicle as well as the location of the accident clearly showing road markings. He would also need the case number.
Then, he could lodge a civil case at his relevant court. In this case, the Johannesburg Magistrates Court.
A neat ending would be if it would cost the other party more to defend the action than pay out the damages, and that would be that.
All of this, however, means getting first a letter of demand and then a summons to the other party. It used to be possible to, through the Post Office, send registered mail that would need signing for. Given the state of the Post Office, a courier would be best.
What to do in the event of an accident:
Get the following information:
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