Archives

If you need treatment for the injuries you are suffering from, you are entitled to ask the other side to pay for private treatment such physiotherapy. There are often long waiting times with the NHS so you’re well within your rights to arrange for the other side to pay for treatment.

Sometimes the other side will instantly offer it to you – mainly in the case of road accidents the insurers will try and sort it out fairly quickly after the accident. So should you take it? How do you know that an offer of treatment with a third party insurer is going to be within your best interests?
Read More

April 2013 – a dark time for the personal injury claiming world as the government in their infinite wisdom decided to stop lawyers being able to recover all legal fees from the other side. For years most victims of negligence were able to keep all 100% of their payout because all legal fees could be recovered from the opponent.

That’s fair, right? Why should the victim lose out on what is rightfully theirs?

But the world isn’t always fair, and the result of these changes has dawned a new age of personal injury claiming.
Read More

In law, there are limitation periods that apply which mean a person can only bring a claim within a particular period of time. The length of that timeframe is normally dependant on where the accident happened, the circumstances, and the age of the person at the time of the accident.

For a road accident that happened in England and Wales, you normally have three years from the date of the accident to bring a claim. This means you must either settle the claim or issue court proceedings within the three year period. Failure to do so may mean you are statute barred from claiming. This normally means you will face difficulties making a claim as your opponent can raise a defence under the Limitation Act 1980.
Read More

A bit of a niche area of law this one – can you make a claim for compensation if you fall because of loose and wobbly steps or paving slabs? Falling at the hands of a wobbly surface is fairly easy to do – no one expects the ground to suddenly move beneath them; unless you’re in a fun house…

There are two common types of claims where this could occur. Let’s look at them both:

In the Street / Public Grounds – Highways Act

If you fall due to a wobbly step or paving slab whilst out and about on public land, in the high street for example, the claim will typically be pursued against the authority who has responsibility for the area. This will normally be the local highways authority or the local council.
Read More

Personal injury claims against supermarkets are common, with customers commonly slipping or tripping in the supermarket aisles. Any owner of a supermarket owes a duty of care to visitors of their store under the Occupiers Liability Act 1957. When that duty is breached, a personal injury is sustained due to the supermarkets negligence.

Under the 1957 Act, ‘An occupier of premises owes the same duty, “the common duty of care”, to all his visitors, except in so far as he is free to and does extend, restrict, modify or exclude his duty to any visitor or visitors by agreement or otherwise‘.

Visitors are to include customers, store staff, suppliers and delivery drivers.  An occupier is to be seen as the individual in general control over the premises or in this instance supermarket in question.
Read More

Manual Handling is one of the most common causes of injury in the workplace. Manual Handling generally includes; lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling or carrying, and most employees carry out some sort of manual handling within their working day.

Common types of injury caused by manual handling are:

• Back pain
• Sprains and strains to lower back and shoulders
• Damages to muscles and tendons

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations were introduced in 1992 in order to keep employees safe in the workplace and to reduce the number of employees injured at work.

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 set out that employer should ‘so far as is reasonably practicable, avoid the need for his employees to undertake any manual handling operations at work which involve a risk of injury‘ and ‘shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of all such operations which cannot be avoided‘ plus ‘shall take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of injury during those operations to the lowest level reasonably practicable‘.
Read More

Together with roundabouts and junctions, traffic light controlled areas are up there with the most common scenes of a road traffic accident. So here are a few examples of classic crashes and a little advice about who may be at fault.

Rear End Shunt

Keep it simple to start with – when traffic slows or is stationary, rear end collisions are fairly common. If the lights change and traffic suddenly slows, it only takes one driver who isn’t concentrating as much as they should to not notice the traffic has slowed or stopped. In the vast majority of cases, the person who collided with the rear of another vehicle is at fault. The excuse that traffic slowed too suddenly isn’t normally a good enough defence!
Read More

Accidents in car parks are fairly common. With so many cars and people rushing about, accidents will happen. So if you have had an accident in a car park, can you make a claim for compensation?

If the accident was not your fault, we should be able to help you out with a claim. You should discuss the circumstances with us and we will confirm if we think we can make a successful claim for you. To help you in the meantime, here are some common car park accident circumstances where you should be able to make a claim for compensation.
Read More

Chemicals can be inherently dangerous to all of us. One of the world’s most famous industrial disasters occurred in Bhopal, India in 1984. In this disaster toxic gas leaked from a pesticide plant and the actual number of resulting deaths is disputed.

Government figures state that around 3,700 people died as a result of the incident, although some estimates claim that as many as 8,000 people have died since as a result of the toxic gas. This alone is an example of just how dangerous chemicals can be.

A chemical accident refers to an event resulting in the release of a substance or substances that are harmful to our health and or to the environment. Such events include explosions, leakages or the release of toxic materials that can cause illness, injury and death.
Read More

Very common question we get here at The Injury Lawyers; but the answer is not so easy to give you. I will try and be brief with this blog so you can get an insight in to how we find out what your claim is worth, and why I can’t tell you now!

There is only one foolproof way to value a claim for personal injury compensation – by seeing a qualified medico-legal expert who produces a report, and by having an expert personal injury solicitor to assess the report and value the claim.

This is the way to truly find out how much the claim is worth.
Read More