Any insurance company will refuse to grant a submitted claim, if it has any reason to doubt the allegations made by a 3rd party, or the allegations about a 3rd party.
Who is the 3rd party?
In a 3rd party claim, that is the victim of the reported accident. That same victim would report the incident to the insurance company of the responsible driver. If the responsible driver had not been carrying any proof of car insurance, then the victim must submit a 1st party claim.
In a 1st party claim the 3rd party is the person that has allegedly caused the accident. The 1st party is a policyholder. An insurance company might not cover all the damages, if there is any evidence that the victim/policyholder was partly responsible for any losses or injuries.
In order to win a pay-out, the victim of the accident must produce proof of 2 facts:
The reported accident caused the victim’s injury.
Someone other than the victim had been negligent, and, thus, was responsible for any accident-linked damages.
The role of a personal injury lawyer in obtaining proof of the mentioned facts
A personal injury attorney in London gets a copy of the victim’s medical report, and looks for any statement that could link the injury to the reported accident.
In order to prove that a 3rd party had been negligent, the same attorney must provide the court with evidence showing the existence of all 4 elements of negligence.
—Evidence that the defendant had a duty of care towards the victim
—Evidence that the defendant had breached his or her duty of care
—Evidence of causation: Proof that the accident had caused the client’s injury
—Facts to support the claim that the victim has suffered a measurable loss, due to the effects of the injury-causing incident.
If a defense attorney has alleged that the victim was partly responsible for any damages, then the victim’s lawyer must fight that particular allegation. Experienced lawyers know how to take on the challenge of digging up material that can rule against the veracity of the claims from the other side.
In order to win that fight, the lawyer must demonstrate the absence of evidence that would support the defense attorney’s allegation. For instance, the lawyer’s examination of the police report might show that the client/victim had not received any ticket from the officer that arrived at the scene of the incident.
By the same token, the victim’s lawyer might show that the client’s phone records had not contained any reference to a certain phone call, one that was made during the minutes before the accident. In other words, there was no proof that the client/victim had been guilty of distracted driving.