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The Accident Group was a
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
-based
personal injury
Personal injury is a legal term for an injury to the body, mind or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property. In common law jurisdictions the term is most commonly used to refer to a type of tort lawsuit in which the person bringing the suit (t ...
claims management company
In England and Wales, a claims management company is a business that offers claims management services to the public. Claims management services consist of advice or services in respect of claims for compensation, restitution, repayment or any oth ...
that went into administration in May 2003. The firm gained notoriety for firing 2,400 workers by
text message
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible comput ...
, which, according to
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
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.
Formation, business model
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.
Administration
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.
In addition, the number of false claims filed by claimants began to cause concern to investors. A
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
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
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
text message
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible comput ...
sent by Langford which read:
Parent group Amulet Group, which was also put into administration in May 2003, said its subsidiary The Accident Group had to cease trading because it could not sustain its "continual battles with the insurance industry" and after "the sudden failure of a banking partner to support the company". The administrators
Price Waterhouse Coopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...
, later blamed Accident Group's "lower than expected claims success rate" for the financial difficulties, which they say "resulted in increased insurance premiums on new business and retrospective claims from the underwriters.".
The closure of the business may have been a shock to staff but not to the Langfords. Knowing that the business was close to folding they sequestered £20m in to the offshore account held in the name of Debbie Langford. Staff were informed of the closure on payday and the salary run, approx £5m, did not go through.
Staff, who were not allowed to join a union, and who didn't receive their final salaries or a follow-up email (as promised in the infamous text message), ransacked the Manchester head office and the Liverpool office and carried off computers and other equipment.
Death of Mark Langford
In June 2000, Mark Langford was convicted of careless driving. This was the outcome of a November 1998 incident in which he had knocked down and killed 73-year-old William Thornley while driving a
Ferrari 355 F1 Spider close to
Old Trafford football stadium, Manchester. Langford had to be cut free from the wreckage of the convertible, and sustained a broken thumb and finger. He was, however, found not guilty of
causing death by dangerous driving
Causing death by dangerous driving is a statutory offence in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is an aggravated form of dangerous driving. It is currently created by section 1 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (as substituted by the ...
.
Langford fled to Spain after the company's collapse. Although having an estimated fortune of between £40m and £75m, Langford had previously been served with a
High Court bankruptcy writ aboard his £1.5million 80 ft yacht Mermaid’s Whisper in
Puerto Banús
Puerto José Banús, more commonly known simply as Puerto Banús, is a marina located in the area of Nueva Andalucía (Marbella), Nueva Andalucía, to the southwest of Marbella, Spain on the Costa del Sol. It was built in May 1970 by José Banús, ...
. Langford had adjourned the hearing until 1 May 2007 after claiming he was suffering from “severe mental illness leading to manic depression." In his absence he was being sought by
HM Customs and Excise
HM Customs and Excise (properly known as Her Majesty's Customs and Excise at the time of its dissolution) was a department of the British Government formed in 1909 by the merger of HM Customs and HM Excise; its primary responsibility was t ...
for £4.1 million in unpaid taxes, and the
Department of Trade and Industry was seeking to disqualify him as a
company director.
[Text message boss killed in crash](_blank)
- Report on death on BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
Langford died in an accident when his
Opel Corsa
The Opel Corsa is a supermini car engineered and produced by the German automobile manufacturer Opel since 1982. Throughout its existence, it has been sold under a variety of other brands owned by General Motors (most notably Vauxhall, Chev ...
left the road in an accident in
Marbella
Marbella ( , , ) is a city and municipality in southern Spain, belonging to the province of Málaga in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is part of the Costa del Sol and is the headquarters of the Association of Municipalities of the reg ...
, Spain on 9 April 2007.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Accident Group, The
Companies disestablished in 2003
Defunct companies based in Manchester