The step by step guide of pursuing a claim for personal injury with The Injury Lawyers
If only I had a pound for every time I hear the words “Well liability has been admitted, so why hasn’t my claim settled yet?” then I’d be a very rich person indeed! The answer to that is that there are a number of steps involved in pursuing a claim for personal injury that need to be resolved aside from just liability.
So, I thought I would give you a brief oversight of the claims process to assist you in understanding it and to give you a full picture of the goings on in a claim for personal injury.
Please note that this process does not apply for road traffic accidents occurring after April 2010 which happened within England/Wales jurisdiction.
Step number 1 – Letter of claim
This is a formal letter to the Defendant / their insurers / representatives giving them the first notification that a claim is to be pursued against them. The letter includes detailed accident circumstances and sets out the reasons why we consider the Defendant to be at fault for the accident. It provides information as to the type of claim we are to pursue, details for the Claimant, and details of the injuries.
The letter of claim sets “the ball rolling”. Once the letter of claim is set to the Defendants they have 21 days in which to acknowledge it.
Upon acknowledgment and/or expiry of the 21 days the Defendant has a further 3 months in which to investigate the claim. So, all in all, that is just under 4 months for them to return to us and confirm whether or not they admit fault for the accident, or if they intend to dispute liability. If they intend to dispute it, they must also provide documentation they intend to rely upon in support of their dispute.
It is frustrating to hear people who say “my friend’s claim settled within a week” – as you can see from the above, this is highly unlikely!
Ok, so, letter of claim in order, now for the next steps.
Step 2 – Liability
Accepting liability, in simple terms, is the admission of negligence.
As a claimant the onus is upon you to prove fault that the claim rests with the Defendant on the balance of probabilities.
Once we have an admission of liability we can proceed to obtain medical evidence on your behalf.
If we have a dispute over liability we shall have to review the file, fact, and evidence for the case prior to returning with our advice. It is likely we will review the disclosure documentation provided by the other side and refer your claim to a barrister for formal advice.
If we are satisfied that the prospects for success for your case are reasonable enough, you’re ready to move on to the next steps.
Step 3 – Quantum
Quantum is the amount of compensation you will receive for your claim.
Compensation is broken down into two categories:
- Special Damages – quantifiable losses; like out of pocket expenses you require reimbursement for, such as loss of earnings, medication fees, travel expenses etc. We shall gather all the evidence you have in support of these and draft something called a schedule of special damages for your agreement.
- General Damages – unquantifiable losses such as the personal injury you have sustained. In order to place a valuation on these losses we shall require you to attend a short medical examination with an expert whom will assess your injuries and compile a report concerning the same. The report should document all the injuries sustained, the pain suffered, loss of amenity, and a prognosis (i.e. the length of time it will take you to recover). From this we can calculate a sum for your compensation. It is extremely difficult to value injuries unless a medical report is obtained.
Once the above is in order we can look to moving to the next stage: disclosure.
Step 4 – Disclosure
Once you are happy with the medical report and schedule of loss, the next step is to disclose these to the Defendant.
We normally submit this and request offers within a 21 day period.
If an offer is received within this period of time we shall consider the offer and return to you with our advice. The appropriate advice will be given, i.e. offer reasonable – accept, or, offer too low – reject and make a counter offer.
In some instances, we do not get a response within the 21 day period, so in some cases we have no alternative but to issue court proceedings.
You should note that just because proceedings are issued does not necessarily mean the case will go to trial. The vast majority don’t – the reason for this is that there are a number of stages in between the issue of proceedings and actually attending a hearing. More often than not, as illustrated above, proceedings can be issued purely as a tactical method to put pressure on the Defendant to respond to us sooner.
Step 5 – settlement
Hopefully, following the 4th step, we should see some negotiations and an agreement being reached on your case.
Obviously the outcome/time frames vary on a case by case basis, not all claims will run as smoothly as the example above as there could be all sorts of complications that I have not covered. However, the above could be used as a brief guide only.
Upon agreeing settlement we normally request a cheque within 14 days.
