A crushing injury to the hand can be significantly debilitating and will often leave the victim with long term impairment. We deal with a lot of crushed hand injuries that largely arise from work accident claims so it is important to know your rights and instruct an expert injury law firm to represent you for a case.
We’ll take a look at some useful workplace health and safety law as well as what you can claim for when it comes to a hand crush injury claim.
What you can claim for
I’ll start with what you can recover as part of a compensation claim first as it is more universally helpful – I can then touch on some useful workplace legislation given that the majority of hand crush injuries happen at work. But if you are the victim of a hand crush injury and it didn’t happen at work then you can still claim if someone else is to blame.
Claims are formed in to two parts – General Damages for the pain, suffering, and loss of amenity caused, and Special Damages which allows you to recover financial losses and expenses. The value of the claim is therefore dependent on the length and severity of your suffering and what it has cost you as a result.
Special damages can include lost earnings for past losses and future lost earnings, and perhaps more importantly, any loss on the open labour market that a crushed hand injury is commonly associated with. What this means is that if your injury will prevent or hamper your ability to continue in your occupation then we can recover compensation for this.
When it comes to the injury claim, the general principle to remember is this – the more you suffer, the more we get for you. We value your claim for compensation by instructing an expert medical consultant to prepare a report for us. That being said, I can give you some hints on what the value of the claim may be for the injury alone using the official guidelines we have in place that we use for assistance when valuing claims.
- Minor crush injuries with recovery lasting a few months – £650 to £3,100
- Moderate crush injury claims – £4,500 to £9,500
- Severe hand crush injuries resulting in significantly impaired function – £10,350 to £20,750
- Serious hand crush injuries that have reduced the hand to about 50 per cent capacity – £20,750 to £44,200
- Crushed hand injuries leading to surgical amputation – £68,750 to £78,300
Where the damage may affect both hands then the payout bracket for hand injury claims can extend to £144,000. Remember – the above is just as a rough guide only and is only for the injury claim itself, so you will still be able to recover financial losses and expenses on top of that.
Workplace Regulations
There are loads of workplace health and safety laws that can be used to win a claim for hand crush injury compensation. Briefly here are some ones we will often use:
- The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations – where an injury is caused by work equipment; for example it could be defective or unsuitable / dangerous
- The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations – where you ought to have been provided with equipment that could prevent a crushing injury (such as hard gloves)
- The Manual Handling Operations Regulations – where a hand crush injury is caused by lifting and carrying dangerously
If your employer is in breach of any of these important regulations then you may be able to win your claim. Speak to us on our free claims helpline for further advice by calling 0800 634 7575.
