Posted By Andrew Powell Hi Phil, You don’t say whether you are accepting liability or not, have you decided. Does your insurance company investigate, what is there opinion? I know that you cannot give too many details but can you say how serious the injury is? Time off, losses etc, You say that the witness did not see what happened, just the lead up events. Therefore, he only has an opinion etc about events leading up to the accident and the claimant themselves. I personally would be very careful about guiding a witness's account for the claimant. It is difficult to remain 100% impartial, if you guide him when filling in the form you may taint any evidence that may help the company counter a claim. Can I assume that you already have a statement from him for your own investigation. If he has been interviewed, his thoughts may be reasonably clear from that and this is what he should be conveying on the form. If you are correct in that the claimant is 80% at fault then through contributory negligence you can expect to reduce the end cost of the claim perhaps by 40% – 70%. Indeed if he has 80% blame, I would aggressively fight the claim. Remember the possibility of one successful claim ending in an increase in overall claim culture. Sorry for the length of the reply. Hope it helps Regards

Posted By Robert Woods If you help this person fill the form in make sure they don't divulge this to the person thats making the claim, or they may suggest that there was just a chance that the witness had been unduly influenced. I would love to know how you can judge that the blame lies 20-80 for the accident. Would you like someone impartial to carry out the accident investigation for free as I am more than willing.

Posted By Allan St.John Holt For what it's worth, I think it's most unwise to get into the game of apportioning blame, and would strongly advise investigators not to get into this at any price! The forum for that discussion is in court, or during the claims process. Any comments made 'up front' can and will be held against the person who made them. Trust me, when a good barrister gets hold of you in court it can be a trying time for a witness asked to justify his opinion in percentage terms. Allan

Posted By Stephen Asbury MBA FIOSH RSP Phil I am not sure if it is necessarily the role of a modern health and safety adviser to deal with claims in the way your messages (and indeed some of the responses) are phrased. I'd stick to gathering a full and factual account of the facts (some photographs are sometimes helpful too), and handing them to the claims investigation department of your EL insurer. If you are seem by 'the guys' as being too close to deciding on claims, it is possible that you will find future accident investigations more difficult and facts perhaps surpressed. Having said that, RoSPA honoured me with its Safety Practitioner of the Year Award (Engineering) in 1995 on the recommendation of our insurer for supporting the overall risk reduction programme, which if done well may ultimately leads to reduced overall claims. Good luck Call if I can help. Regards Stephen Asbury 01283 509175

Posted By David .J. Minnery Phil , My apologies for calling you Robert in my response , it should have read Mr Roberts . David