I’m sure you have all been in a position were someone is talking some kind of jargon to you in a language you don’t understand and you just stand there smiling, slightly embarrassed, a bit uncomfortable and just nod along like the Churchill dog (from the Insurance adverts) to avoid looking silly but really thinking to your self ‘Please translate you idiot’!
So here it is fully appreciated that not everyone understands “lawyer speak” , because lets face it…. Nothing is simple unless you know it! – so when you are submitting a claim following an accident that wasn’t your fault, you need to know what some of these funny sounding terms mean… lets start with damages, ‘general’ and ‘special’.
Damages are the items you are claiming for and there two types of damages/losses that you can claim for following an accident. These are general and special damages.
I think the best way you should try and differentiate between the two is like this:
- Special damages : a specific loss that can be itemised by an invoice or some sort of documentary evidence – for example a policy excess that you have paid following a car accident or medication and treatment costs – these are a specific amount and are a ‘special damage’
- General damages : is exactly what it says, they are general! You cannot put a specific value on these heads of claim. These include your personal injury itself – a specific sound value can never be put on your injuries. Once medical evidence has been obtained in support, we will have an idea of the amount of compensation you should be looking for but no-one could ever say ‘yes… your injuries are worth X amount to the penny’ as you will appreciate every injury varies and all we have are guidelines to say how much approximately you should be looking for.
You must note that you only have one right of action which basically means you can only ever issue court proceedings once on any claim you may have. – So your special and general damages will form one claim and your solicitors should recover the items together for you.
If you were to issue court proceedings for a policy excess or for treatment costs (for example), you would not be able to go back at a later date and make a further claim for any other item of claim, including your personal injury. There are exceptions of course, as we recently had a claim where we issued proceedings for our client’s injury and the other Solicitors tried to strike out the claim as our client’s insurers had issued proceedings for hire costs without ever telling our client and prior to him ever contacting us – We won because of the special circumstances, so it is not always a fast and hard rule but it is the starting point and the usual position.
You must also note that you can only claim for damages which were reasonably incurred as a result of the accident, and any loss which was not caused directly by the accident is not usually claimable. So for example, it is not possible to claim for loss of earnings in your claim if you have not had any time off work following the accident/ your injuries and it is not possible to claim for your policy excess if you have not paid a policy excess following the repairs to your car/motorbike.
It’s quite difficult keeping up with all the legal jargon and our best advice would be to instruct a firm of solicitors who speak in friendly and an easy to understand way, the last thing you need is for your Solicitor to make things even more difficult by speaking in “Gobbledygook!”.
