A dad with a £500,000 'work injury' was caught out after being spotted carrying his daughter on his shoulders. Perry Scott, 45, made claims for two incidents that he said left him "15 per cent of the person he used to be".
The builder submitted insurance claims for the falls from a ladder and a scaffolding platform at window-height. He said the accidents in 2015 and 2016 left him unable to work and tried to claim £500,000.
The Norfolk father told medical experts that after he spent days in bed or on the sofa following the incidents, and was unable to take his children to the park. However, the Mirror reports that surveillance photographs later showed him walking, shopping and carrying his daughter on his shoulders.
After a three-day trial at Great Yarmouth County Court last month, Recorder Gibbons found that Scott was a '"undamentally dishonest" claimant. He ordered Scott to repay £13,000 paid to him by insurer Aviva and made an enforceable order against him for indemnity costs, likely to exceed £150,000.
The judgement came after the court heard that Scott’s wife had told neighbours about how the couple intended to spend the money now that "Perry doesn’t want to work again." Medical experts dismissed Scott’s claims about the extent and severity of his injuries.
In his judgement, Recorder Gibbons said: “Listening to the claimant and the way he conducted himself, I am left with the impression that he might actually believe some of his own arguments.
"This however is no defence and what was in the claimant’s mind has to be subject to objective standards of honesty. The claimant attempted to mislead the court by leading the evidence he did.”
Neil Southern, of law firm Clyde & Co LLP, who was instructed by Aviva, said: “This is absolutely the right result. Mr Scott lied about the accident circumstances, lied about the injuries he’d sustained and lied about their impact on his life.
"His claims ought to have been settled years ago, for modest sums. Instead, he refused reasonable offers and embarked on a campaign of deceit that was only ever intended to result in him receiving a large sum of money to which he was not entitled and, in the process, forced Aviva to incur substantial costs in proving his dishonesty."
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