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Suffering from a psychological injury can be just as distressing as suffering from any physical one but claiming for psychological injury can be an incredibly difficult thing to do sometimes.

Commonly the main thing in these claims is that the injury HAS to be a recognised psychological injury; i.e. not just natural human emotions such as stress, anxiety and worry.  Therefore if you are looking to proceed with this type of claim it is imperative to seek a medical diagnosis.

Secondly, another common thing is establishing whether you would be classed as a “primary” or “secondary” victim. The leading case in this area comes from something that has been in the news a lot recently and which claimed the Christmas number one this year – The Hillsborough Disaster of 1989.

Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, concerned several claimants wishing to pursue a claim for psychiatric damage caused by either seeing relatives suffer in the crush or alternatively experiencing the aftermath of the disaster. The court grouped these types of claimants into the category of “secondary” victims as they were not injured or in danger of immediate injury; those that were, were classed as “primary” victims.
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We know that there is a lot of competition in the personal injury world – with each firm looking the same as the next, it can be hard to chose who to go with. However, when you dig beneath the surface, law firms can be VERY different from one another. Here at the Injury Lawyers we have strove to ensure that we stand out from the rest.

Unlike some companies out there, we are an actual law firm. We are not a claims company, advice helpline, or some sort of agent. We can give you legal advice right from your initial call and it is us that actually deal with your case if you instruct us to. The advice we give you from the beginning is therefore real legal advice regarding your potential claim. We do not pass your details around, so there are no middlemen taking cuts from your claim.

Unfortunately, many companies do involve themselves in this practice and this can affect how your claim is run. If the firm pays £1,000 (the going rate) to a middleman for your details, this takes away funds from the fees allocated to run your case and therefore it is very likely that they cannot provide the great service we do and cannot fight as hard for a higher payout. Essentially they’ve squandered a load of their budget on paying a middleman – the referral fees are not recoverable from the other side.
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As a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers with years of claims experience under our belt, we’re more than used to dealing with insurers, and we’re more than used to the fact that they aren’t always the easiest of people to work with! Thankfully there are protocols in place where we can impose deadlines on insurers to respond to claims within appropriate timeframes.

For example, when a letter of claim is submitted to a Defendant in a common accident at work, occupiers case (like in a supermarket or shop), claim due to defects on the highways, or product claims for example, the other side has 21 days to acknowledge the letter of claim under the pre-action protocol for personal injury. Once it has been passed to whoever will be dealing with the case, usually an insurer, they have three months to investigate a claim. So, generally speaking, the other side has just under four months in theory to respond with a decision as to whether they will pay you out for the claim or not.

Some may respond quickly, leaving you knowing whether the other side intends to defend the claim at an earlier stage; whilst some may well take the entire timeframe just to come back to us. Some may not respond at all – in this case we can issue an application for pre action disclosure against them to force them to respond with the power of a court order. This unfortunately will add time to the claim, but at least it’s something we can do to force a response in the event they fail to respond. An application, if successful, is costly for insurers; so it’s within their interests to respond in time!
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The only way to value a claim for personal injury compensation is by getting examined by an appropriate expert who then produces a medico-legal report, that is in turn used by a fully qualified personal injury lawyer who will review the evidence and value the claim based on the correct legal guidelines.

On top of that, if you have suffered any loss of earnings, or medical expenses, travel expenses, care and assistance from friends and family etc, these can be added in as well.
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When the claim is settled and the only thing that’s left is for the cheque to be received, cashed, and spent, a lot of people get anxious and want to know how long it will take for the cheque to get from the insurers and in to their hands. The problem is that it can be hard to say.

We normally put insurers or solicitors to a deadline of around 14 – 21 days to get the cheque to us from the day they confirm the settlement amount, but all sorts of things can go wrong. The cheque itself may not be too easy to track.

It will normally have to be raised by the insurers or whoever is dealing with matters on the opponent’s side, sent out to your solicitors, and then sent to you. How long it takes the accounts department for the other side to raise a cheque is anyone’s guess. How long it takes the royal mail to get it to us and then for us to get it to you is again, difficult to predict. Second class doesn’t always get to its destination in time, and first class doesn’t always mean next day delivery.
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Many types of accidents are a traumatic experience in some way, and I would say that even a minor accident can affect a person psychologically. Some psychiatric injuries can be long term and more sever and when there is a proper diagnosis of a recognised psychological condition, the Claimant can claim compensation for the psychological injuries sustained in addition to any physical injuries.

To get compensation for psychiatric injury there are a number of conditions a Claimant must satisfy. There must be an actual psychiatric injury (that is diagnosed) and mere fear, worry or grief is not always sufficient. Primary victims are those in the zone of physical danger.

Primary victims need to establish that physical harm was foreseeable and there is no need to establish that psychiatric injury was foreseeable.

Secondary victims are those not within the physical zone of danger but witnesses of a horrific events. Secondary victims must show that they are in a close tie of love and affection (with the primary victim), that they witness the event with their own unaided senses. There must be proximity to the event itself or its immediate aftermath and the psychiatric injury must be a result of a shocking event.
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Will my claim go to court? How long will my claim take? Will I win my claim? All common questions…

Sometimes people find themselves asking these questions; particularly if you feel your claim has been going on for longer than it should. However, the length of the claim can vary significantly depending on a few common factors:

The quality of the injury lawyer you have.

1. The severity and length of your suffering.
2. The laziness of the other side.
3. Whether the other side is defending the claim or not.
4. You!

How Good is Your Injury Lawyer?
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This is a topic I feel I can advise you on with relative ease and compassion. For the sake of example, I will focus on ruptured knee and ankle ligaments, although it can apply to most other ligaments in the body. Having been through multi ligament rupture from a traumatic dislocation of the knee, I think I know a thing or two about the trials and tribulations involved when suffering with such an injury! Hopefully my experience and advice can help you too.

First and foremost, rupturing ligaments is normally bad news. Torn ligaments that are surgically repaired do not always heal well, so rupturing one normally requires some form of reconstruction surgery. Sadly that means suffering for months with an injury and a huge stretch in physiotherapy.

The wonders of medical science today mean that you don’t have to lose a limb when rupturing ligaments. A ligament rupture is usually defined by a ligament completely breaking to the point where it has been separated. It is not a case of just stitching it back together like you can with a bone; bone on bone heals normally quite well, but a ligament normally needs to be reconstructed.
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The festive season is very much upon us; but unfortunately, just because the decorations are up, doesn’t mean that the amount of accidents occurring goes down. At this time of year the roads can be treacherous and therefore accidents are more likely to occur and unfortunately result in nasty injuries to nurse over the festive period. This of course is the last thing you want to happen at this time of year when you’ve got the office Christmas party coming up or you’re travelling to see family and therefore you may wish to start a claim for compensation.

HOWEVER! Insurance companies know that at this time of year money can be tight and therefore take this opportunity to try and settle many claims for compensation directly and cheaply – for them!

This is known as third party capture and does not fill us with festive cheer here at The Injury Lawyers.

Third party capture is the process of the defendants insurance company contacting you directly to settle a claim. Of course, being offered money straight off is always a nice thing but it is important to properly consider the implications of accepting such a sum.
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Compensation is based upon the severity of your injuries and how long the injuries will affect your everyday life. As such, there is not really such a thing as a “standard” payout for any particular injury as everyone can be affected differently.

In law the defendant has to take the claimant as they find them – for example if your injury is an exacerbation of an existing injury this doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to claim as, of-course, if it wasn’t for the injury, your condition would not have been aggravated!

So how is a payout assessed? Well, put simply a payout is always assessed on the particular facts of each individual case. There is no such thing as one payout for this injury and another for something else – each case will have its own individual payout.
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