Any fracture, no matter where it is on the body, can cause some significant pain, suffering, and loss of amenity. Although the femur (upper leg / thigh bone) is said to be the strongest in the body, a hard impact injury can easily lead to a break.
So what can you claim for when it comes to making a broken femur injury claim and what sort of payouts are we looking at here?
Read on for more advice…
What you can claim for
You can claim for the extent and length of the pain and suffering caused, as well as the loss of amenity caused. Generally speaking, the more you suffer, the more we get for you.
So the extent of you claim is largely based on the severity of the break. If it’s a simple break requiring no operation, then there is probably less of an impact than if it’s complicated and you need pins, screws, or plates inserted. In that kind of scenario, you will normally suffer more severely, and for longer.
We will look at things like:
- The complexity of the break (e.g. compound fractures can be worse than simple cracks or breaks)
- Whether you need an operation (or several operations)
- Whether you can bear weight
- Whether you will need physiotherapy to rebuild lost strength
- Long term problems
We will send you to see an orthopaedic medical expert who will assess you and your medical records so they can provide a report for us to value the claim based on this kind of information.
On top of this, you can claim for losses, such as:
- Lost earnings from time off of work
- Medication expenses
- Private physio costs which we can arrange for funding for so it doesn’t have to be paid before the claim settles
What kind of payout can I expect?
It all depends on two things:
- The nature of your individual suffering
- Your lawyer
As I said earlier, the more you suffer, the more we get for you. On top of that, if you have a specialist personal injury law firm like us working for you, we can use our particular expertise and knowhow to get you the best possible payout. Some solicitors who are not specialists may not be able to achieve this, and many will want huge deductions from your claim – between 25% and 40% to be precise.
When it comes to valuations, we can look at the official guidelines for a rough idea as to how a claim can be valued. This is only a very rough idea though as its all down to your individual case and the medical report you have.
The official guidelines say:
- Simple fractures to the femur with no damage to articular surfaces: £6,500 – £10,050
- Fractures with an incomplete recovery: £12,850 – £19,850
- Multiple fractures of the femur with ongoing problems: £19,850 – £28,000
- Serious compound or comminuted fractures: £28,000 – £39,150
- Very serious femur fractures where there are permanent mobility problems for life, where multiple fractures are taking years to heal requiring extensive treatment and lasting deformity: £39,150 – £60,400
- Most serious injuries short of amputation can be where fractures have not united and extensive bone grafting has been required / gross shortening of the leg has occurred: £68,750 – £96,800
For advice, call our specialist claims team on 0800 634 75 75.
