Credit Hire

As a recognised market leader, our credit hire team is known as the strongest in the industry.

Over 50 experienced case handlers from a variety of backgrounds including claimant law firms, CHOs and insurers provides a truly unique skillset. It also gives an invaluable insight into the ethos of our most regular opponents and an undeniable advantage in the fight against problem Credit Hire Organisations.

Extensive experience of GTA & non-GTA
Multiple clients across five offices, including Glasgow & Belfast
Dedicated pre-litigation and litigation teams
Regular and targeted KYO strategies routinely adopted to change claimant solicitor behaviour
Annual Credit Hire forum
Strategic litigation specialists responsible for some of the defining case law in this area
CoA experts
Max Withington, Partner, is an active member of FOIL and is Chair of the Credit Hire Special Focus Group

Firmwide cooperation

Drawing on the expertise of our fraud, intelligence, costs, motor and casualty departments, we have a well-defined, holistic approach to dealing with credit hire claims. Collaboration with our fraud and intelligence departments in particular is key to our success, and sets us apart from our competitors.

Our success

We constantly evolve and improve our strategies to bring even greater levels of success and savings to our clients. Landmark cases include:

Copley v Lawn – a case handled by Darren Mendel which, to this day, sets the platform for all intervention issues and has seen unprecedented savings for insurers.

Mee v Esure – a decision allowing insurers to recover costs from Credit Hire Organisations (CHOs) directly.

EUI Ltd v Charles & Others – provided the draft of the order for standard disclosure made in credit hire cases, following our bold strategy of making applications for pre-action disclosure.

Hussain v EUI Ltd – this High Court decision is now the definitive authority on the Court’s approach to taxi credit hire cases and awards for loss of profit.

Clayton v EUI Ltd – a landmark Court of Appeal decision giving guidance on how Courts should deal with imperfect BHR evidence and deal with excess waiver protection. Crucially, the decision confirmed that Courts should admit and accept evidence from stand-alone excess protection.

Rashid v Naylor – a highly publicised case which confirmed that where there is certainty on liability, and when facing ongoing hire charges, a claimant should utilise their own comprehensive insurance policy instead of waiting for the defendant to settle his vehicle damage claim.

Khaliq v EUI – This reported case bolsters the application of Hussain v EUI in taxi cases where claimant’s prove a social & domestic need for hire in addition to taxi use. The decision confirms that in these instances the claimant should only be entitled to recover BHR for a standard vehicle plus loss of profit on top.

Our expertise

Our Large and Complex Team will take on responsibility for any cases that also involve ANPR, indemnity issues, complex personal injury, complicated taxi claims and credit hire fraud.

KYO strategies play a key role in dealing with complex credit hire issues. To tailor our KYO strategies, we work with insurers to understand the individual issues impacting them and deliver the approaches that will help change behaviours. We believe knowledge-based strategies are imperative in driving down credit hire indemnity spend, enhancing an insurer’s reputation and reducing avoidable litigation.

Our proven track record of working with insurers to deliver market leading results on volume credit hire work led to us being selected to deal with pre litigation credit hire work for a major insurer, stepping into their shoes to deal with those cases from inception to settlement. During a two year period we successfully handled over 26,000 claims, achieving average hire savings of 22% vs the GTA rate and total hire savings of £5.7M.

We are a leading authority on taxi cases. Building on the success of A-line Taxis v Ward the courts have provided useful guidance to reduce the cost of taxi credit hire claims and restrict relevant cases to loss of profit (Hussain v EUI). As a result we have reduced the rate of avoidable litigation and overall indemnity spend for our clients when dealing with taxi credit hire cases.