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Investigative
agencies who engage in this unethical activity are frequently the
same ones which conduct telephone interviews, but write the report
as if the contact was a personal interview--and charge travel time
and expense. At L,P,C., Ltd. we adhere to our client's
restrictions as well as legal and ethical restrictions. Our
work is easy to audit, since we include descriptions or scanned
images of claimant's homes--and we clearly identify sources of
information, except on those rare occasions where a source wishes to
remain anonymous.
Reasonable &
Prudent Investigative Activity:
About twenty years ago, a
police officer in a small town arrested a burglary suspect, based
solely on suspicion. He advised this fairly dense suspect that
if he could pass a polygraph test, he would be freed. The
suspect agreed and the police officer, who had no polygraph, put a
wire around his wrist and hooked it up to a photocopy machine in
which he had placed a sheet of paper containing the words,
"You're Lying!" He then asked the suspect if he had
perpetrated the crime in question. The suspect said no,
whereby the officer pushed the print button on the copy
machine. Out came a copy sheet saying, "You're
Lying!" and the suspect confessed. This was thought to be
quite clever by some, until the case was thrown out of court.
Likewise in the private sector, in the sixties, it wasn't unusual
for a P.I. to let the air out of a claimant's tire, or pour oil
under it, causing the claimant to change the tire or bend over, at
which point the P.I. would begin to take movies of the
activity. These folks thought they were clever also--until one
was hit with a major lawsuit. In that case, the claimant
repaired television sets on the side. The investigative agency
rented a fifth floor walkup apartment and staffed it with a pregnant
female investigator and a TV set which couldn't be repaired on the
spot. When the claimant arrived, he had no choice but to do
something he didn't normally do--carry the TV back to his
shop. The problem was, because of his condition, he was unable
to handle this task and fell down the stairs suffering significant
injuries in addition to aggravating his previous condition. At
L.P.C., Ltd. we believe that trying to be "slick" or
"tricky" on an insurance case not only provides
unacceptable exposure to the client, it's also pretty stupid.
Putting a claimant in a situation to force him or her to engage in
activity not normally attempted so the investigator can get a few
feet of video would be termed entrapment in the public sector.
In the private sector, all it does is distort the facts of the
matter and provides a misleading perception of the claimant's true
restrictions to the client. As shown in the General Motors
investigation of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, grounds for suit
exist when investigators conduct unreasonably comprehensive personal
research on an individual even when all investigation is conducted
in a perfectly legal manner. At L.P.C., Ltd. we are well aware
of the changing risks in our business, and always maintain a
reasonable prospective and field strategy. This is not to
imply, however, that we can't be creative when the situation demands
it. Our job, we believe, is simply to provide the client with
the facts developed. If the claimant is not exaggerating the
claim, the client's best move might be to attempt to negotiate a
settlement--something which might be put off based on distortions in
an investigative report. Bottom line--we believe we handle
insurance matters the right way. As noted elsewhere in this
site, we have never been sued, nor have we ever gotten our clients
into trouble.
Basic Claim
Investigation Services:
Loss Prevention Concepts,
Ltd. provides a fairly complete line of claim-related investigative
services by personnel with extensive experience in |
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