Certain bad things in the news take on a life of their own for a few months, then the bad guys get caught out! The most recent ones are the sickness claims following holidays. A few years ago there was a whole spate of families claiming compensation for sickness that occured whilst they were away – usually some cheap spot like Benidorm or Torremolinos. The silly bit was that to claim they didn’t even need much proof of illness – just evidence they’d either called a medical person, visited a hospital or bought over the counter medication whilst away. They then had to claim within 3 months of returning home. The claims got so numerous and some families were using the compensation to book more trips to carry out identical scams. Holiday companies had to resort to looking at hotel cc-tv to see the families concerned during their usual every day activities. Almost all the families were filmed having a fantastic time, eating and drinking and showing no signs of distress or illness. Must be difficult to defend these families when it’s obvious that it was deliberate. But solicitor training is geared up for all eventualities.
