In this blog I am going to share one of the secrets that we teach on our courses to help our students and attendees produce successful claims. If you are not already applying these principles, I guarantee that they will make a massive difference to your claims and to whether they will be accepted and, resolved in a timely manner.

Let’s first take a moment to think about what a claim actually is. My definition of a claim is “something that comprises an assertion of a party’s right under the terms of a contract or at law”. In other words, we are simply asking for something to which we are entitled.

The object of a claim is therefore to demonstrate, firstly that the claimant has entitlement to compensation and secondly, to demonstrate the amount of the compensation.

If we have just entitlement to our claim and we are going to produce a successful claim, we need to demonstrate our entitlement by including the following four essential elements, which you may find easier to remember by the acronym CEES:

• C – Cause. The event that has given rise to the claim.
• E – Effect. For a claim to succeed it is necessary to demonstrate that the effect on which the claimed compensation is based was caused by the event in question by linking cause with effect.
• E – Entitlement. A demonstration of cause and effect will not automatically carry entitlement to compensation, so we must show where the entitlement stems from, which is in most cases, the terms of the contract.
• S – Substantiation. Substantiation is required to prove that on the balance of probabilities, statements made, points relied on, calculations and the like included in the claim are true.

So there you have it. If you want your claim to succeed, ensure that it contains these essential elements. Remember CEES!

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