No Insurance – No Penalty Points

Question:

This article relates to a recent victory at court. The case does not set a precedent – but it shows that if handled with care it is possible to avoid points in a no insurance case where no one else was at fault.

Read on……

In x, Mr x was stopped by an officer and was told that his vehicle was not insured. Mr x was surprised as he believed that his insurance policy had been automatically renewed. However, when he arrived home he looked at the renewal letter and realised that he had not read the letter thoroughly, as it actually confirmed that his policy would not be renewed automatically.

However, despite this we took the matter to Court and managed to persuade the Magistrates that Mr x was driving under a genuine and reasonable misapprehension that he was insured and he did not receive any points or a fine.

 Mr x was the owner of two vehicles, one business and one pleasure.

For many years, the vehicles were insured through the same company and upon expiry, the policies would be automatically renewed. In June x, Mr x was feeling the pinch of the recession and decided to browse an insurance comparison website to find a cheaper quote.

However, he was only able to find a cheaper quote for his personal car. Mr x therefore kept the policy for his business vehicle with the same company, and changed the insurance for his personal vehicle to a new insurance company.

In x when the policies were due to expire, Mr x received two separate renewal notices for his two vehicles. Thinking they were simply confirming details, he did not read them and put them to one side. Unbeknown to him, the renewal letter for his personal car was actually confirming that his policy was not going to be renewed automatically.

At Court, we argued that it was reasonable for Mr x to think that both of the policies were going to be renewed automatically.

We suggested that he had no reason to read the renewal letters, as both of the policies had been renewed automatically for many years and he was expecting this to continue. The Magistrates agreed and stated in their decision that at no point did they believe that Mr x was trying to avoid paying for insurance.

Lawyer Paula Guest