PI Brief Update

Vnuk: End of the Road? - Nicholas Bevan, Solicitor, Mediator, Consultant and Trainer

20/10/14. On 4th September the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered what is arguably its most important ruling to date on the scope of compulsory third party motor insurance (TPMI). The decision in Damijan Vnuk v Zavarovalnica Triglav d.d., [2014] CJEU Case C-162/13 is a ‘game-changer’, in the sense that it is likely to precipitate significant legislative reform across the European Union, including the UK. It is also something of a ‘name-changer’, at least for those of us who specialise in ‘RTA work’: because that term has become something of a misnomer. The Vnuk ruling confirms the scope of TPMI regime is wider than is signified by terms like ‘road accident’.

False assumptions

From a claimant practitioner’s perspective, one reassuring feature of motor loss and injury work is the knowledge that there is usually a motor insurer somewhere in the background and, ultimately, that it will satisfy any award or settlement; failing that, the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) will usually step in. Consequently, in the vast majority of motor loss and injury claims, our main efforts are usually directed to establishing liability and proving the quantum of our client’s loss and injury. To this extent at least, the legal aspects of TPMI is often perceived to be something of a placid backwater, one that has been left relatively undisturbed by the turbulence inflicted by that tide of European law that Lord Denning so vividly portrayed in Bulmer (HP) Ltd v J Bollinger SA [1974] Ch 401.

It is well established that European law does not concern itself with civil or criminal liability arising out of the use of motor vehicles, here our indigenous law reigns more or less supreme¹ as does the contractual autonomy of insurers and their policyholders to define the terms of cover under a TPMI. It is also true that when it comes to TPMI the contractual and statutory liability of motor insurers has been regulated by a succession of Road Traffic Acts over the past 84 years and even that relative latecomer, the MIB, has been with us for 68 years. This statutory and extra-statutory provision has attracted its own coterie of case authorities, much of it well settled and seemingly unaffected by European law principles.

Unfortunately appearances can be very deceptive, particularly in the context of TPMI...

Image ©iStockphoto.com/DNY59

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