BBLSP1 wrote:Is such insurance actually necessary?
It's a very interesting and sensible question, and there’s no easy answer. As has been correctly pointed out, most household policies only cover you in connection with incidents related to your home. Although lawyers would have a field day debating what such an exclusion really meant it's a very useful escape route for insurers.
My (limited) understanding is that for such a claim to be successful, negligence and a duty of care need to be proven, which is quite a high bar, and not the case I think in the above example. Hence, as we are all reasonable people on here
, we are unlikely to be found in a situation where such a personal claim could be successfully pursued.
Unfortunately, whilst you’re correct to say that negligence has to be proved your conclusion that a careful person is unlikely to be negligent completely ignores reality.
There’s a good reason that situations giving rise to liability for negligence are called accidents - it's because that's exactly what they are. There is no inference of recklessness in a finding of negligence, and even the most careful people make mistakes from time to time.
I'm sure every reader of this post can think of occasions when they momentarily lost concentration while driving, whether it was through re-tuning the radio, changing a CD, trying to make sense of the satnav, swatting a wasp, shouting at the kids in the back to keep quiet, etc, etc
ad infinitum. Every one of those occasions involves temporarily taking your eyes off the road, and it only takes a couple of seconds of such distraction to result in an accident causing massive injuries or death.
That's why motor insurance is compulsory - because driving a car is the most dangerous activity that most people undertake.
And the reason PL insurance is not compulsory is that the chances of becoming liable for thousands or millions of pounds damage other than by driving are extremely remote. But they aren't non-existent.
The most obvious examples of where this might happen arise out of the consumption of alcohol. You might be visiting a friend’s house and because you’re a bit drunk you stumble and collide with your friend. Unfortunately, you're carrying a glass that shatters and slashes his artery, so that he bleeds to death.
Or you're out fishing on his boat. You foolishly stand up to swap sides, but being under the influence you stumble and fall on to him, knocking him out of the boat, causing him to drown.
But you don't need to be intoxicated. You take a risk whenever you volunteer to help someone. For example, you might help a friend whose car has broken down by making a repair, but in doing so you accidentally and unknowingly damage a vital component which then fails, causing the car to crash. Or, especially these days, you offer to assist in fixing a friend’s PC, but inadvertently introduce a virus or malware that results in his bank account being emptied.
Whilst cases such as this are mercifully very rare, and the chances of being sued if you were in such an unfortunate situation are minimal, the risk does exist.
It also has to be borne in mind that a remarkably large number of people - just over a quarter - don't have any home insurance. And the risks of incurring liability in your own home to a visitor are much higher than outside the home.
So in theory, general PL insurance is probably a good idea for everyone with assets sufficient to make them worth suing. But in practice it's extremely rare - in fact, I can't think of any private individual I know who has taken out such insurance or even contemplated doing so.
I've often advocated that the National Insurance system could be used far more creatively. In particular, the state could provide legal expenses insurance as an add-on to NI very simply, just by increasing the rate payable from, say, 12% to 12.25%. Most people wouldn’t even notice the difference, but this would be equivalent to making you eligible for non-means tested legal aid.
Likewise, they could offer PL insurance for a tiny amount - maybe an increase from 12% to 12.1%.
I'd bet there are many people who would be interested in such a scheme, particularly as it didn't involve lining the pockets of insurance companies, and the additional rates could easily be fixed at a rate that was self-financing.
(chas49)