Accident Group
| Industry | Claims management company |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Motorlaw |
| Founded | May 2003 |
| Founder | Mark Langford |
The Accident Group was a Manchester-based personal injury claims management company that went into administration in May 2003. The firm gained notoriety for informing its 2,400 workers of their redundancy by text message, which, according to BBC reports, led to the firm's offices being emptied of computer equipment by disgruntled staff. The business was placed in to administration the day before staff were due their monthly salaries.
Mark Langford (29 May 1964 - 9 April 2007) trained to become a solicitor. However, after failing to qualify he started Motorlaw before launching The Accident Group in 1999, and placed Gary Hoddes as Managing Director. Hoddes then went on to place members of his own family in Director positions, including Phil Hoddes (brother) [Sales Director], Jackie Brennan (sister) [Operations], Mike Boxen, Paul Boxen and Maria Berry. Many of these directors had been involved in the collapse of disgraced kitchen manufacturer Farouche Kitchens.
In light of a change in the law, the model on which the Accident Group operated began to fail. Legal costs undertaken by the claimant were moved from claimable against the other party, to payable by the claimant. This meant that the amount of money paid to claimants dramatically fell, whilst the money payable to solicitors undertaking the claims were too high.
Secondly, the number of false claims filed by claimants began to cause concern to investors. A BBC One program, The Man That Made Accidents Happen, interviewed the former Accident Group special investigator Paul Stott. Mr Stott focused on the practice of multiple claims - the practice in which a single claimant would sometimes make claims for many different accidents. He also found that some salespeople also made many multiple claims for themselves. Stott claimed that one couple who both worked for the company and had made 33 claims for themselves, of which nine were accepted by the company, and made a further 40 claims for people living in their street, and another 68 claims on two addresses nearby where their friends lived: of the total, 24 were accepted by the Accident Group. Stott said that many claims went through, defeating the checking procedures the company had put into place, saying: "Working on the figures that I had to hand at the time, of the totally ridiculous claims, 30 per cent went through."
After administrators were called in, notoriously most of the firm's 2,400 employees were dismissed via SMS text message sent by Langford which read:
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