A main concern for many people when they have had an accident is that they may not be able to return to their trade. For example: if an electrician is involved in an accident in which they seriously damage their hand, it is unlikely that they will be able to continue to work in this trade if they can’t use their hand as well as they used to be able to. When this happens you are said to be “disadvantaged on the open labour market” as your employability is ultimately affected.
Primarily, it is important that if you feel your injury is going to affect your line of work that you mention this at the start of your claim. This is because the burden of proof is on the claimant and therefore you (and your injury lawyer!) must show that the injury will affect future prospects of work. Of course, in the above example it is quite straight forward but this is not always the case, especially if the injury concerned is partly psychological.
There are different circumstances that can arise under this heading. It may be that you cannot continue to work at all, can simply not work in a particular trade or cannot work in your trade for a certain amount of time. In all these circumstances there is the possibility to claim for the decline in employability.
One of the most difficult things about this part of your claim is quantifying how much you are entitled to dependant on your individual circumstances. Sometimes it can simply seem that awards given in these cases are plucked from thin air or shows judges “taking a stab at the appropriate figure”.
Therefore, it is important to instruct the help of a personal injury solicitor with experience in this area to ensure you get the correct and optimum figure. This includes ensuring we have all the relevant statements and evidence to support a claim for being disadvantaged on the labour market- this is why (as mentioned above) it is important to inform your solicitor of this straight away so that it is included in any witness statement. In the case of Smith v Manchester the importance of this evidence was emphasised as the award was lessened as Lord Justice Laws stated “the absence of any particular reason to suppose [the claimant] might be thrown onto the market means the figure is too high”.
Here at the Injury Lawyers, as we only deal with personal injury claims we come across people whose employability have been affected by their accident frequently and therefore have extensive experience in pursuing this area of the claim. Once damages are decided there is no going back to recover more and therefore it is incredibly important to have someone experienced running your case. So contact us today to discuss the next stages- we can even get things going straight away and organise any private medical care you need.
