Insurance and claims

Der Regress looks as if it ought to mean what « regress » means in English, a movement backwards, and in philosophy German does use it that way: der unendliche Regress is the same infinite regress. In a letter from an insurer it means something else. Once the company has paid for a loss that somebody else caused, it turns to that person and asks for the money back, and that claim is der Regress, English « recourse ». The fixed phrase is jemanden in Regress nehmen: die Versicherung nahm den Unfallverursacher in Regress. Nothing moves backwards except the bill. The legal step that makes it possible stands beside it on this list, der Forderungsübergang, the transfer of the policyholder’s claim to the insurer, which English calls subrogation. Read a claims letter with the English sense in mind and the sentence seems to describe a decline; in fact it says who pays in the end.