Legal advice: Stolen bikes

Specialist motoring solicitor Andrew Prendergast guides us through the legal trials and troubles around having a bike stolen…

Question: I read in one of your articles that you successfully helped a fellow biker whose insurer refused to pay out because his bike was stolen when he lived in a flat.  I have exactly the same thing.  I live in London, so my insurance is comedy high.  Therefore, I decided to keep my bike in my mate’s garage.  It’s something I have always done over the past five or six years and if you play with the comparison websites it helps bring the insurance premium down if you tick that box.  No insurer has ever had a problem with that, until I needed to make a claim.  Unfortunately, last month my Ducati Diavel got stolen from outside the front of my block of flats.  I had picked it up the evening before from my mate’s garage as I intended to head out for a ride early Saturday morning with the boys.  I had locked it to a lamppost, but by the next morning it had gone.  I was gutted.  Things got even worse when the insurance company started questioning me about my garage.  They had checked online, noted my address was a flat and then when I told them it was my mate’s garage, which is about a mile away, they refused to pay out for the bike.  I couldn’t believe it.  I want to sue them for the £13,000 I have now lost.  Will I win like your other Client?  Like him, I live in a flat and feel I am being discriminated against.

Answer: I am very sorry to hear your motorbike has got nicked but I am afraid I am not writing with good news.  In the other case, our client did also live in a block of flats.  However, unlike your situation, he had a private parking space, at the address, in a brick-built, secure parking area, that he had declared to his insurer.  Whilst his insurance company tried to wriggle out of it when his bike got nicked, where he parked his bike overnight matched the definition of “garage” in his insurance policy.  Therefore, when we took the insurance company to Court for failing to pay out for the theft, they lost spectacularly because his bike was stolen from his “garage” as declared and as defined in his insurance policy.  Your situation is completely different, as you told your insurer your motorbike was kept in your garage, when you do not even have one.  By your own admission, you did this to get cheaper insurance.  You are meant to go to your insurer with “clean hands” so they can assess the risk fully and then charge you the correct premium.  What you have done is classic “misrepresentation” when obtaining insurance in the first place.  Therefore, you will lose if you take your insurer to Court.