How do insurers use surveillance in injury claims?

The legal teeth behind the footage

Section 57 obliges the court to dismiss an otherwise valid personal injury claim where the claimant has been fundamentally dishonest, unless substantial injustice would result, and the Supreme Court in Summers v Fairclough Homes had already confirmed the power to strike out grossly exaggerated claims. Surveillance is the classic evidence in these cases: a claimant describing a housebound existence filmed carrying shopping, working or playing sport. Insurers also deploy it defensively, to reassure themselves that a large claim is genuine before settlement.

How a compliant operation is run

Surveillance is commissioned on reasoned suspicion, scoped proportionately, and conducted from public vantage points by operatives who log everything. Disclosure is then a tactical and procedural question for the defendant’s solicitors, with the courts penalising both premature tip offs and late ambushes; the operator’s job is to deliver complete, continuous, dated material that survives cross examination, with the operative available to give evidence.

What instructing parties receive

Tremark provides insurers and defendant solicitors with planned observation, date and time stamped footage, full logs and court ready statements, at budgets agreed before deployment. The evidential pack is described in what a surveillance report includes, and admissibility is covered in surveillance evidence in civil proceedings.