Loads of people who are either making a claim for personal injury compensation, or considering it, are really keen to know what their claim could be worth. We understand this natural curiosity – in times of such financial hardship, it’s great to know that you could be awarded a healthy payout for your pain and suffering, and it’s always nice to know how much it is. Perhaps we can start thinking of that holiday to Spain or pricing up the cost of a new driveway if we knew how much we are going to get!
BUT – and this is a big but – it is not as easy as you might think to tell you right away from the start what your claim could be worth.
What’s the average? Give me a ballpark? – I won’t hold you to it!
If I had a pound for every person who has used a phrase like the above to me, I’d have a nice little windfall myself! But it isn’t easy to just throw a figure at you – irrelevant of the fact we have probably dealt with loads of cases just like yours, and irrelevant of the fact you may have no intention to ‘hold us’ to it!
As a law firm, our duty to you is to correctly advise you – giving you ideas of what the claim might be worth based on guesswork and averages may not be providing you with the legal service you actually deserve. We know a lot of lawyers love to tell people high figures based on official guidelines, which can sway people to claim with them. But the fact of the matter is, you’re being potentially misled.
How we value a claim
To get to grips with understanding why we can’t just tell you a figure in the absence of a crystal ball is that each case is assessed on its own merits. We value your claim by sending you to see a medical expert who is qualified to provide us with what we call a medico-legal report. This report addresses how the injury has affected you personally, and that’s what we will use to help us value the claim.
It can depend on loads of things, such as:
- The affect it has had on your lifestyle – if you’re an active person, being incapacitated may affect you more than a person who is nowhere near as active
- The type of job you do – manual jobs can mean a more significant impact on your ability to work, and / or the levels of pain if you need to continue to work through the injury. This can prolong your suffering
- How it personally affects you – some people are stronger and less tolerant to pain and will battle on without a worry in the world; but some people cannot cope in the same way and may be affected more
This medical report identifies this – you could have two people in the exact same accident and they may get totally different amounts all because the above.
The expert is independent and their duty is to the court, so they will give their opinion as to what is seen as reasonable. You cannot just ‘try it on’ for want of a better phrase…
Losses and Expenses
The claim is actually formed from two parts – General Damages for the pain, suffering, and loss of amenity caused, and Special Damages for losses and expenses. So things like lost earnings, travel expenses, medical expenses, care and assistance expenses, and many more items can be included as well.
This can form a huge part of the case and it can push the value up quite a lot if you have needed time off work as a result of the injury.
So we have medical evidence and losses sorted – how do we put a figure on it?
We use our wealth of experience as personal injury lawyers combined with official guidelines used to value claims.
With the mention that there are official guidelines, you may well be thinking to yourself that we can give you a ballpark figure or a rough estimate because there is such a thing as a guideline we use. You would be correct – but as I said at the start of this article, it still isn’t as easy as you might think.
For example – a minor whiplash claim is valued between £1,000 and £5,000. The vast majority of people fall within the legal definition of the minor category, and as you can appreciate, this bracket is huge and you could be sitting anywhere on it. So it may not be that helpful, and there is a massive difference between £1,000 and £5,000.
