The Court intervened on the thorny issue of compensation for damage caused by road accidents, tracing the direction of a squeeze on false testimony. Here’s how
False testimony is a plague that weighs on the insurance sector and, consequently, on the pockets of anyone with car or motorcycle insurance. We are talking about the bad habit of hiring compliant witnesses ready to confirm a dynamic other than the actual one of an accident or of inventing from scratch an accident that never occurred. The purpose is all too simple: to collect undue compensation, which ends up in that margin of risk that the companies spread on all policies. However, something is changing, also thanks to technology. The Supreme Court has dealt with the issue underlining the rigor with which the matter must be treated, in particular the need to accurately prove the facts and excluding that it is the judge who has to fill in the gaps of insufficient reconstructions and claims for damages based on too many generalities.
No new witnesses
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Compensation for damage caused by road accidents is a subject discussed both in courtrooms and in Parliament. The key point is to tighten up fraud without denying the right of the truly injured to be compensated. In 2017, paragraph 3 bis was introduced in article 135 of the Insurance Code, which requires the identification of witnesses before the start of the case, to avoid the risk of introducing texts once the proceedings have begun to support false reconstructions. A rule that in reality has not found great application.
Without a photo, the witness is worth less
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More recently it was the Supreme Court that intervened on the issue, with the order 28924 of 5 October 2022 and with the contextual decision 28622/2022. In fact, both weaken the role of witnesses if not supported by photographic evidence, also highlighting how, in the era of smartphones and image culture, it is not normal for an accident not to be photographed by the parties involved to document the damage. . A new element, which certainly cannot become a rule since it is necessary to admit the possibility that no one actually took pictures without necessarily meaning that there was no damage. However, and this is a fact, the Court implies that in the absence of photographic evidence the word of the witness is worth less.
November 11, 2022 – 10:35 am
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