Many, many years ago when I was a rookie manager, The Nation organised some training for its management team and the lead facilitator was respected Queen’s Counsel Leroy Inniss, now a retired judge with wide regional knowledge. I distinctly recall that he advised managers not to take it personally if a subordinate has to take court action against the company because of some accident or injury.
His point then was that as a manager you had to act maturely, recognising that often a lawsuit was nothing more than a procedural step to achieve a particular outcome, especially when an insurance company is involved.
All this returned to my mind recently as I investigated the case of a woman who suffered injuries to her hands and legs when she fell from a car after the driver moved off without realising that she was not fully inside.
Here’s my first bit of advice: Don’t assume when you are in an accident that the people with whom you will have to deal will be reasonable.
The passenger who fell from the car, Gail, has now reached a roadblock that only the police can dismantle. It took me less than a minute of conversation with the manager of Quality Auto Rentals in Clarke’s Road, Derricks, St James, to understand why – he is one of those unnecessarily unreasonable people.
Follow the sequence:
• On July 7, Gail, as she does so often, got a ride home from her job at a South Coast hotel with one of her managers, Randy. Along the way he stopped at Sagicor in Collymore Rock to pick up his wife and Gail shifted from the front seat to the back.
Randy moved off before Gail was fully in the car and she fell to the pavement, bruising her left knee and left elbow and also hitting the right knee. She was assisted to her feet by a Sagicor employee.
• On the way home Randy stopped in Black Rock so she could see Dr Raju Marella, who administered a tetanus injection, prescribed antibiotics and painkillers and advised on how to treat the knee.
• Since the swelling and pain persisted, on July 17 she visited Sandy Crest Medical Centre, where the knee was x-rayed, but showed no fracture. She was advised to undertake therapy for soft tissue damage.
• On July 23 she attended her first therapy session with Dr Phyllis Burnett at Warrens Physiotherapy Clinic. She has been to three other sessions since then.
• By this time the bills were adding up from an accident that none of the parties at first thought was serious, and Randy was advised to report the matter to his insurance company, Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL).
• At the time of the accident, however, he had been driving a rented car supplied by ICBL because his own vehicle had been rear-ended previously, and the other party had accepted liability.
• According to Gail, Randy reported that ICBL contacted Quality Auto Rentals but made no progress.
• Gail contacted me for advice and I raised the matter with CGI boss Peter Harris. CGI insured the hired car. Like me, he felt the issue was more “procedure” than anything else, and advised that I tell the driver of the vehicle to go to Quality Auto and report the accident.
• By this time a few weeks had passed and Randy could not even recall the registration number of the hired car he had been driving. He also reported that the officer of the company refused to take a report from him or furnish him with the registration number of the car, or the name of the owner of the business, suggesting that if there had been an accident it should have been reported to the police and he had not been contacted by lawmen. In essence, officials at Quality Auto Rentals dismissed him.
• Gail again contacted me and I advised her to report the matter to the police. She did that on Sunday August 9 and was taken back to the scene of the accident by Constable Nelson of the Hastings Station, who is now investigating.
• Yesterday I contacted Quality Auto Rentals and spoke to the manager, who identified himself only as “Mr Alleyne”. He was agitated, impolite and not at all helpful, except to confirm in the process of the conversation that they had rented “the gentleman a car through the insurance company”.
And it was his reaction that brought back to mind the advice of noted attorney Leroy Inniss. So often we take matters of business and/or procedure and make them personal. He came over as personally offended that “some man” would contact him, having not gone first to the police.
On reflection, the sensible thing would have been to contact the cops immediately after the accident, but how many of us are involved in matters which we dismiss at first and then have to go back and retrieve the situation because we underestimated the gravity of the encounter?
All that was required, particularly if the manager felt it was an attempt to scam him, was to direct the individual to the police – not to dismiss him.
It certainly is not appropriate to determine instantly that your company or its insurance carrier can’t be liable so you are not taking a report.
Mr Alleyne’s own words to me suggested a dismissive attitude: “I rent this man this car and then all of a sudden, I think it was about three weeks . . . somebody from an insurance company call me and say that they have a lot of bills here for some accident of so and so . . . I said ‘Wuh I don’t know nothing ’bout no bills, sir’ . . .
“Well my deputy, she spoke to the man who she went and rent de vehicle to, and he said he went and pick up this woman . . . and he made arrangements to pay because she didn’t even want to go to the doctor . . . Wuh de woman never contacted me so I don’t know nothing ’bout it . . . . The police never called me and said, ‘Mr Alleyne, your car was involved in an accident’.”
Asked what he would advise the driver to do now, he said: “He said to me it was his responsibility from day one . . . because he went and paid for X-rays. He said the lady sent him a text saying it was she fault that caused she to fall down because they were laughing and making sport.”
His conversation with me suggested he had made up his mind about where liability resided and it was not with him. My problem is that that is not his call to make. All that was required was for him to politely direct the driver to the police and the insurance company and I am certain CGI’s investigators would eventually arrive at a conclusion.
If it turns out that the victim was at fault, then so be it, but being personal and dismissive at this stage is counter productive.
I will continue to track this issue and report on its progress.
