In a personal injury claim you can be given general guidelines as to the likely compensation you are entitled to receive. However, the amount of compensation is accurately calculated upon the receipt of medical evidence in respect of your accident related injuries.
Whiplash is probably one of the easiest to assess – but the specific amount to be placed on your injuries will depend on several aspects.
The Judicial Studies Board, who provide guidelines to your legal representatives, have set out the following in order to help us assess your claim for compensation and the value of it. The assessment of compensation for your injuries will consider the following:
- The seriousness of your injuries and whether you have suffered any broken bones, any disfigurement or any physical or mental impairment
- Whether you are likely to make a full recovery or whether you are likely to suffer any long term affects/side effects.
- Whether you have experienced any loss of earnings/income or are likely to experience any loss of earnings in the future as a result of the accident
- The level of pain you have suffered or are still suffering
- How your day to day living has been affected by the injuries
Although these are guidelines provided to us, they do not provide specific numbers and values for the injuries. Injuries are placed into categories and then into a wide bracket of figures. If you have been or are suffering from severe whiplash then the chances are that you are likely to be quite incapacitated.
The bracket provided by the Judicial Studies Board for severe whiplash states the following:
Neck injury associated with incomplete paraplegia or resulting in permanent spastic quadriparesis or where the injured person, despite wearing a collar 24 hours a day for a period of years, still has little or no movement in the neck and suffers severe headaches which have proved intractable.
The valuation provided for this type of injury is: In the region of £106,000
Injuries, usually involving serious fractures or damage to discs in the cervical spine, which give rise to disabilities which fall short of those as above but which are of considerable severity; for example, permanent damage or substantial loss of movement in the neck and loss of function in one or more limbs.
The valuation provided for this type of injury is: £46,900 to £93,500
Injuries causing fractures or dislocations or severe damage to soft tissues and/or ruptured tendons which leads to chronic conditions and significant disability of a permanent nature. The precise award depends on the length of time during which the most serious symptoms are ameliorated, the extent of the treatment required and on the prognosis.
The Valuation provided for this type of injury is: £32,500 to £40,000
As you can imagine, these types of injuries are unlikely to be caused in your average rear end shunt and are more likely to occur in a serious road traffic accident. Injuries such as the above can have life changing affects and serious financial hardship.
As a firm of solicitors who only deal in claims of personal injury, we do deal with claims for people who are suffering from these types of injuries. Therefore we have the knowledge and expertise to fight for the compensation you deserve for the injury, inconvenience and life changing affects this would have had on you.
If you would like to discuss your individual circumstances with us then please call our friendly and helpful Claims Team.
Our Claims Team can be contacted on 0800 634 75 75 and provide free and professional advice.
