Any fall or impact injury can result in deep cuts (lacerations) to the legs, which can have a far greater impact on a person’s life than most people might think. If it’s a deep wound then it may need to be surgically cleaned and stitched or stapled, and you may need to immobilise part of the leg to prevent the wound from reopening.
Read on for more advice about how we can value a claim for a leg laceration and what sorts of things we look at.
People are often a little unsure about how we claim for a laceration injury because the pain will normally be a very short term issue. Even for a deep wound you may only suffer with a few days or a couple of weeks of stinging, which isn’t a great deal amount of suffering.
But it isn’t just the pain we take in to account when we value a claim for a wound like this – we need to look at the nature and severity of the scarring which can make up a large part of the amount of the claim for personal injury compensation.
Scarring can affect different people in different ways, so it is very much down to the individual. I, for one, have a massive surgical scar of that runs across more than half my entire left leg. I personally do not care in the slightest about it. It doesn’t make me feel unconformable when wearing shorts, and the scar itself doesn’t really cause me any issues other than it being tender to touch on occasions, and there being nerve damage (which I will go on to shortly). For some people, like myself, it may not be an issue.
Others though may feel very uncomfortable with such a scar, and may feel very self conscious about how it looks to other people. Scarring can of course look horrible, and so for some people, there is quite a significant psychological impact from such an injury. This is something we need to take in to account, and the value of the injury claim can be hugely influenced by the extent and severity of the scarring, and how this makes a person feel psychologically.
With these types of wounds there are other things to consider as well – is there any loss of feeling from nerve damage in the skin? If the surface nerves that control sensitivity and feeling are cut, they normally either take years to repair and come back to normal, or they never heal at all in many instances. This is a form of suffering and we need to take this in to account. There may be a period of immobilisation to prevent a wound reopening which can of course cause a lot of problems, time off work, difficulty with quality of life, etc.
How we value a claim like this is normally by sending you to see a Plastic Surgeon, as it’s normally their field of expertise for when it comes to scarring and nerve damage. We may also need to send you to see a Psychologist if the affect of the scarring is having a real impact on you mentally. You should never feel daft or ashamed at feeling uncomfortable about scarring – although it can have very little impact on some people like I mentioned earlier, its recognised in law, and it’s very understandable, that it can have a huge impact on many people.
We take this seriously and it’s taken heavily in to account when valuing the claim.
The amount you can claim for is therefore highly dependent on the medical evidence and factors such as:
- Your sex – as females often receive more than males as its recognised in law that, for the larger part, females would be more conscious about scarring
- The percentage body area affected;
- The cosmetic impact of the injuries and the injured person’s reactions to them;
- The need for (and extent of) surgery;
- Any resulting physical disability;
- The psychological impact.
When it comes to values, it’s hard to place you in the spectrum accurately without the medical evidence because of how highly case-dependent these types of claims are. But the official guidelines that we use for assistance in valuing claims state the following:
- A single noticeable scar, or several superficial scars – £1,680 to £5,430.
- A large proportion of awards for a number of noticeable laceration scars, or a single disfiguring scar – £5,430 to £16,250.
It’s important to understand that there is so much to look at that using the above as an idea for how much your claim could be worth may be dangerous. Always speak to a lawyer and get the right medical evidence and advice to make sure you receive the true value of your compensation claim.
