The Role of ATE Insurance in the Post Office Scandal - Litigation Finance Journal

[Gunnar Larson]

https://litigationfinancejournal.com/the-role-of-ate-insurance-in-the-post-office-scandal/


The Post Office scandal has brought the role of litigation funding in
opening access to justice to the fore, with the media coverage generating
fresh opportunities for funders to talk about their vital role in
supporting victims of a miscarriage of justice. However, it is equally
important to recognise the role that litigation insurance played in
supporting the sub-postmasters legal campaign.


In an article for Insurance Post, Alan Pratten, chair of M&A, litigation
and tax insurance solutions at Gallagher, provides new insights into the
use of after-the event (ATE) insurance in the postmasters litigation.
Pratten goes into the nuances and challenges that were overcome as an
insurance broker, working in tandem the postmasters legal team which was
led by James Hartley, partner at Freeths.

Pratten explains that the claimants’ legal teams had struggled to secure
ATE initially, with one of the primary issues being that ‘many of the
claimants, owing to the findings of the Horizon software, had criminal
records, having been convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting.’
Insurers were therefore naturally averse to involving themselves with a
case involving fraud, which was compounded by the fact that ‘the majority
of existing ATE policies would have been nullified due to some claimants
having previous convictions.’

Pratten goes on to detail how Gallagher worked with a panel of UK and US
insurers to craft sufficient ATE insurance cover for the sub-postmasters,
which involved ‘working with a panel of insurers and reinsurers and
tailoring the policy wording in 85 different areas.’ He describes the case
as setting ‘a new precedent for ATE in the industry’, and emphasised that
the bespoke nature of this policy shows ‘that standardised policies are
rarely the best fit and that clients need an insurance broker that
understands, and can cater to, their unique circumstances.’
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