Postscript - Insurers will not budge, despite ruling.

(From Post Magazine)

Byline: Tanya Powley.

A recent appeal judgement forcing insurers to pay medical-legal agency fees is unlikely to lead to an industry-wide agreement, according to Royal Sun and Alliance.

In a landmark judgement handed down last Wednesday, the Court of Appeal found that the fees charged by medical agency firm Mobile Doctors were recoverable in full as a disbursement.

This overturned a judgement last December in the case of Woollard and Woollard v Fowler, which found in favour of insurer Zenith that medical agencies' report costs should not be recoverable as part of the disbursement following a road traffic accident case.

However, since the case began in 2004, Zenith entered an agreement with the Association of Medical Reporting Organisations, alongside a large number of other insurers, acknowledging that it was prepared to pay the relevant agencies the element of the invoice (PM, 12 January 2006, p8)

Matthew Game, managing director of MD, said he was delighted with the outcome of the appeal: "Since the introduction of the predictable costs regime, many insurance companies have been refusing to reimburse the claimant in full for the medical disbursement and often only offer to pay the examiner's fee in isolation."