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.’
