Why your client might benefit from ATE insurance

Authored by DAS

Traditional legal expenses insurance is intended to protect the policyholder from the risk of legal costs arising from an event which may occur in the future. ATE is a specialist insurance product, which can only be purchased once an event has already happened, i.e. for personal injury cases, the injury must have already occurred.

Here are a couple of cases where ATE insurance helped DAS clients.

Commercial land purchase dispute

Our customer brought a claim for a specific performance relating to a substantial sale of land.

The buyer paid the deposit but due to a challenging history between the parties had failed to complete the purchase alleging that they had been fraudulently induced into entering the contract by our customer and raising a counterclaim in excess of £1.3m.

At risk of not just losing the sale but being liable for the other sides claim, mitigating the litigation risk was essential. Given the personalities involved, a settlement was highly unlikely and the case was strongly defended.

We agreed to support our customer through an ATE insurance policy. In this instance the customer required a significant level of indemnity in order to protect them against the other sides costs and own disbursements, the cost of the policy was less than 5% of the value recovered, and we provided support all the way to trial where the court found in favour of our customer.

DAS ATE Products

Defamation case

Our customer had unsolicited and demeaning photos of them distributed online and in the press.

Following a night out with friends our customer believed they had their drink spiked. Whilst they had no recollection of events on that evening an article was published both online and in print regarding the incident. The article named our customer and included several photographs in which they could be clearly identified. Our customer suffered distress and damage to their reputation as a result of the publication and sought the support of DAS to pursue a claim against the distributor of the article.

We agreed to support our customer through an ATE insurance policy. Our customer’s claim was successful, agreeing a sum for damages and an official apology from the distributor.

As defamation remains one of the few case types where ATE premiums remain recoverable, in this instance, as the customer was successful, the insurance premium was recoverable from the defendant.

For more info on our ATE partnership opportunities, CLICK HERE, leave a message and youTalk-insurance will pass your enquiry on or call them on 0370 241 1345.