Author: Vyacheslav Prokofiyev (source: https://rg.ru/2010/11/23/strahovanie.html)
The bullet launched by the newcomer fell into the leg of a 67-year-old businessman, also a hunter, breaking a bone and sending him to the hospital for two weeks. Rehabilitation took a few more months, but even after that, the injured was unable to return to his previous work and work at full strength. According to the local laws all hunters were supposed to be insured, the lawyer of the entrepreneur, having drawn up the dossier, issued a bill for 1,300,000 euros to the insurance company of the perpetrator of the accident.
Why is such a huge amount? There is a so-called "indemnity" principle of compensation for damage in France, that is, the insurance company must cover all types of losses incurred by the injured party. In this case, it is not only payment for treatment, compensation for physical and moral damage, suffering associated with them, but also am foregone income. The entrepreneur owns a number of firms; he had some important negotiations scheduled that broke down; they could have led to promising deals. Usually, in such cases, the defendant's company offers the lawyer of the plaintiff a counter amount of 700 thousand euros, which is followed by a refusal. Thus, the case made to court. Note that as a rule no more than five percent of insurance cases get to court in France.
So, by the trial results, the court determined the amount of immediate injury inflicted on the entrepreneur of 1,200,000 euros.
As they explained to me in the association ANDIVA, which together with lawyers specializing in insurance is protecting the interests of victims from various kinds of accidents, there are no strictly defined limits for compensation of damage. There are only some parameters that are taken into account in any case. It is, of course, a temporary or permanent loss of ability to work, the pain suffered by the injured, and a number of other factors. The volume of payments is always the result of "tug-of-war" between the two parties of the insurance conflict.
When there is an obvious perpetrator of an accident, whether it is a car accident that caused injury; or a plane crash with human victims, the problem of damages is resolved in the usual way, through insurers. And what if someone suffered, for example, during a natural disaster? Or on the highway a roe deer jumps plumb below the car wheels, which led to its death and injuries to the driver and passengers? Who is responsible?
In these and similar cases, when the defendant as such is simply not there, there are special funds in France. There are several of them. The first was the Guarantee fund of obligatory indemnification of damage. This fund is supervised by the Ministry of Finance, but the state does not contribute its own funds to it. Where is the money coming from? Out of citizens’ and insurers’ pockets. As for civil liability insurance (mainly it concerns mandatory car insurance), 1.2 percent of the amount due goes to the Guarantee Fund. The insurance companies allocate 1 percent of their turnover in the fund. As for terrorist attack victims, a separate fund has been created for them. It exists at the expense of French insurance premiums. Every citizen who enters into a property insurance contract contributes 3.30 euros. And the victims can apply to this fund within 10 years from the event.
Photo per website: ganezh.odessa.ua, smolensk.glavny.tv
