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The NHS is stretched thin – so when you need treatment fast but you have to wait for weeks or even months before getting any, what can you do? You should have treatment when you need it the most, which for the majority of injuries is in the early stages. But you can get access to private medical care if you make a claim with The Injury Lawyers today!

If we accept your claim and the prospects of success are good, we can get access to private medical care right from the start of your claim. There are no upfront fees for it; we will claim the fees back from the other side at the end of the claim if we win, or claim it from insurance if the claim doesn’t win. We don’t have to wait for the other side to accept liability first. It’s kind of like treatment on a no win, no fee basis!

Our medical partners have to be happy that there is a good enough chance to win the claim, and there are certain bits of information they will need before they can look to sorting treatment out. But this shouldn’t normally take too long, and most people get a call within 48 hours of us asking them to help with treatment.
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Who is really offering 100% compensation now?

April 1^st 2013 saw one of the biggest shake ups in the entire history of personal injury claiming. Any agreements entered in to on or after April 1^st now means that it is unlikely you will be able to receive 100% of your compensation payout. The reason is that the law changed so that now lawyers are unable to recover all of their fees from your opponent.

That’s how it worked before – we were entitled to recover all of our legal fees from the other side meaning you get to keep your full payout. Now, there are two things we can no longer recover from the other side. One is something called a success fee, that is part of our fees deigned to reflect the risk of taking a case on, and the other is something called an After The Event Insurance premium. This is to protect you from having to pay out for unrecoverable disbursements (things we pay out on your behalf like a medical report) or costs from the other side.
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If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you or someone you know has slipped over in a supermarket. I’m sorry if this is the case, but I’d encourage you to read on because I need to tell you something very important that could be the making or breaking of your claim for compensation.

In these sorts of cases, evidence can be everything. By law, a supermarket is liable to compensate someone who has slipped and fallen in their premises if they have breached the Occupiers Liability Act. This important piece of legislation stipulates that the occupier of a premises has an important duty to make their premises as safe as they reasonably can.

To prevent a slipping hazard as reasonably as possible, the supermarket should have a system or inspection and maintenance to look out for and clear away any hazards on the floor or place wet floor signs or cordons in the area until a hazard can be cleared away. What could be classed as reasonable is open to interpretation – if it’s a really busy Saturday afternoon, then a half hourly or hourly inspection may be classed as reasonable. In the early hours of the morning where there are far less customers, it may be less.
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It helps to go to your doctor or a hospital / walk in centre after an accident. If you have been speaking to some personal injury lawyers, they may well have advised you to go and have some form of medical attention ASAP if you haven’t already. It can help your lawyer during the process of pursuing your claim for compensation.

Here’s why: the value of your claim is based on the severity and longevity of your pain, suffering, and loss of amenity. This is known as General Damages. On top of that you are entitled to claim for losses and expenses, known as Special Damages. For this article, we will stick to General Damages.

The way we value your claim is to instruct a suitable medical expert to see you for an appointment and produce a report that we then use to value your claim. This report is going to form as the basis for how much your claim for General Damages will be worth. It is therefore very important!
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It’s so common for people to want to know how much they might be awarded for making a claim for compensation. The fact is, it’s very hard to tell right from the start of the claim, as it’s all based on medical evidence and losses. So, to help you out, here is a quick guide on the sorts of things we look at when valuing a claim for compensation.

The Injury

You can, of course, claim for the injury. The amount is based on the severity and length of any pain, suffering, and loss of amenity. Generally speaking, the more you suffer the more we get for you. We value the claim based on medical evidence which we obtain from a suitable qualified expert. If you suffer a broken bone, you will normally be seen by an orthopaedic expert. If you sustained a laceration or a burn, you would commonly see a plastic surgeon.
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If you are pursuing a personal injury compensation claim then you probably want to know the possible value of your claim (i.e. how much compensation you will receive). You may receive something called a “pre-medical offer” from the Defendant.

A pre-medical offer is simply an offer to settle your claim before you have been examined by a qualified and professional medical expert. It’s important to note that the Defendant is not being nice or amicable by making a pre-medical offer; it’s more than likely they’re only trying to save themselves some money.
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The amount of compensation you are entitled to receive is all about the severity of the injury, the affect it has on your everyday life, and how long you will be suffering for. On top of that, there are losses and expenses to consider – like lost earnings from time off work, medical expenses, treatment fees, etc.

This all takes medical evidence and collating your individual losses. It can end up being a great deal of work. So when people ask us the question “how much can I claim for – just give me a ballpark figure – I won’t hold you to it!” it’s not as easy as it sounds. For straightforward injuries we can perhaps give you averages and statistics, but it still maybe nowhere near the figure you’re actually entitled to receive.
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This is a fairly common question that is asked of our expert claims team here at The Injury Lawyers. The answer is no; you don’t HAVE to go to hospital if you don’t need to.

It is highly recommended that you see some form of medical expert. You don’t have to go to hospital if you can see your GP for an appointment instead. As long as you have some form of medical attention which leads to your medical records being updated with information about the injuries you have sustained and how they were caused, you should be fine.

The reason you need medical attention is that we will later value your claim for compensation based on medical evidence from a report we will obtain from a suitable expert. It is a great help to the expert to see your medical records to show that you sought help after sustaining the injuries. They can use this as part of the report.
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People often have the misconception that claiming for compensation requires you to be seriously injured, or at least in a position where something is broken and a hospital was needed for treatment. This is not the case – and I’m not talking about injuries that are far worse, like amputations or brain damage; I’m talking about sprains, bruising, and other injuries under the scope of soft tissue damage or lacerations.

The answer is simple – no you don’t have to have broken something, and you can claim for what we would class as minor injuries. There are two potential roads to go down – firstly, if your injury lasts more than four to six weeks, it should be worth at least £1,000. As long as it is worth at least this much, we can make a compensation claim as we are entitled to recover our legal fees from the other side. If it’s worth less than that, you can still claim but the case would likely fall within the realms of the Small Claims Track. For this, a solicitor cannot normally recover fees so you might have to go it alone in a small claims court.
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Here at The Injury Lawyers we deal solely with personal injury claims – we are therefore experts in the personal injury field. If you are wondering whether you have to be off work to make a claim for compensation, put simply, the answer is no. If you are injured in an accident that was not your fault, you could be eligible to claim compensation. It does not matter whether or not you took time off work.

It could be that your injuries did not affect your work and therefore you may have been able to continue in your employment. With minor injuries, for example minor whiplash injuries, people may not have to take any time off work. Whether or not you do need to take time off work will depend on the nature and severity of your injuries and also the nature of the job that you do. If you do heavy manual work then you may be less able to fulfil your duties. However before taking time off speak to your employer as they may be able to offer you an alternative role while you get better. This is often referred to as “light duties”. You may be able to work but you may not be able to do anything heavy.
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