The direct redress against the insurer and the insured’ right of defense La acción directa y el derecho de defensa del asegurado

Abstract

There is no doubt that the legal standing that the Colombian law establish for the victim of a tort, in order to file a legal claim against the insurer of civil liability, constitutes a practical and beneficial mechanism, which facilitates such victims a less tortuous access to their right to a full compensation. However, such legal standing takes to a series of substantial and procedural issues regarding the insured (tortfeasor), which answer is far from being pacific in the Colombian legal systems. Particularly, such problems can be synthetized in the need or not of calling the insured to the judicial proceedings, due to the fact that his civil liability will be an unavoidable legal issue in the litigation initiated against the insurer. The present article pretends to explore the legal frame that allows to correctly comprehend the said difficulty, as to propose an answer to it, from the Colombian law perspective