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Special Damages is something that can be recovered as part of a claim for personal injury compensation.

A claim normally comes in to two parts – General and Special Damages. General Damages covers the injury itself – the pain, suffering, and loss of amenity caused by them. Special Damages is for losses and out of pocket expenses caused as a direct result of the accident or your injuries.

Lost Earnings
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It all depends on a few factors. Firstly, the accident or injuries have to have been caused through negligence. In short, someone, or some company, must have failed to do something that they can reasonably be expected to do, or have negligently done something and caused an accident or an injury.

There are genuine accidents – but if the accident caused was foreseeable, you may have a case.

The best thing you can always do is call us here at The Injury Lawyers, and explain the circumstances as to how you have been injured, and allow our team to assess the merits of your claim there and then.
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If you are lifting heavy objects at work then there is an obvious risk that you could sustain injury, especially if you have not received training or advice in respect of lifting heavy objects. An employer should provide you with training to enable you to do your job properly, without sustaining injury.

In terms of lifting heavy objects, there should be procedures in place to ensure that injuries are avoided all together or reduced as much as possible. In some jobs lifting and carrying heavy objects is simply part of the job. However workers should not be expected to do this blindly, they should receive training on lifting and carrying techniques.

An employer who does not provide adequate training is leaving itself open to negligence claims when employees become injured. Typical injuries could include back and or neck strain, shoulder strain etc. For objects that are particular heavy employers should consider other ways of moving the objects, perhaps by avoiding manual handling all together. You can of course move objects using equipment such as fork lift trucks.
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First of all, whiplash is an injury to the neck which is caused by the soft tissue in the neck being stretched and strained after a sudden jolt or movement. It is not just confined to the neck, it can affect the shoulders, back, arms and hands and most of the time can result in headaches.

Therefore, if you are travelling in a vehicle which has unluckily driven into/over a pot hole (and let’s face it, some of them at the moment are large enough to get stuck in), then the jolting movement of the vehicle can jolt your body and more importantly your neck.
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This is something that always seems to worry people when they are considering making a claim – as understandably many people do not like the thought of being put in front of a judge with someone firing questions at them (like you see on the many court dramas on T.V). However, in the majority of civil claims they never get as far as going to court, so there really is no reason that this should deter you from pursuing a claim.

The civil procedure rules – the rules that govern personal injury claims – are specifically designed to stop the need to go to court. They do this through a number of ways with the main one being what is called a Part 36 offer. I will not go into much detail here about these, but they are a good example to show how the rules are designed to deter people from going to court.
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Legal expenses insurance is undoubtedly the biggest scam in the personal injury claims arena!. It involves your insurance company SELLING your details across to a solicitor – and this solicitor will then contact you and run your case (if you confirm with them of course). Many would think that, this has nothing to do with them – so what if they have bought my details – why does that matter to me?

I assure you IT DOES! Nothing causes more frustration here in the office, than when insurance companies and the solicitors involved in this system catch people in their trap.

Under the road traffic accident protocol, solicitors are only able to recover fixed fees. This is relevant because, if your solicitor has already paid a chunk of money to the insurance company for your details (shall we say £1,000 – which is not an uncommon amount), this takes away from the amount of money they have available to them to run your case.
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When you are suffering from an injury as a result of an accident, it is inevitable that you will incur some losses. This can include things such as loss of earnings, medical and treatment expenses but also any items that may have been damaged because of the accident. This last one some may think is only applicable to road traffic accidents as of course cars are inevitably damaged one way or another; but items such as clothing and jewellery are always vulnerable to damage.

However, understandably, there has to be something in place to ensure these losses are not exaggerated and stay in the realm of “reasonableness“. This word is used A LOT in relation to losses and is the main guiding principle when calculating losses. So always think to yourself “Is this reasonable?” when incurring any losses – hiring a supercar rather than the courtesy car offered to you is probably not mitigating your loss (unless your car you’re temporarily replacing happens to be a supercar, because an argument for having like-for-like may be accepted).

So what does “mitigating you losses” mean? Basically, that you must try and keep your losses to a reasonable minimum.
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In short- a big difference! And one that can severely affect the service level you receive during your claim but also the final settlement!

“We have been trying to contact you regarding your accident; we now have details of how much you can claim”

The above is the classic example of correspondence from a claims handling company- it is highly unlikely that this is from a reputable solicitor’s firm. There are some major points that I will address in this blog which hopefully will show that a claims management company is NEVER the best way to go- ALWAYS seek your own solicitor to act on the case for you.
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So what does the term quantum actually mean? Quantum in law essentially means value. Every day we get asked questions along the lines of “How much compensation will I receive?” and “What’s the value of my claim?”

The first point to note is that it’s impossible to value a claim at the outset – any value given by Solicitors at this stage is an approximate – for example if your injury sounds like a general whiplash injury you may hear figures of £1,500 to £2,000 being talked about.

However, in reality, it’s impossible to properly value a claim at the outset as the value of a claim depends on the injuries sustained and the effect of the injuries on the Claimant’s life.
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Although it is never a good idea to get in a vehicle when the driver has been drinking, it does not mean that you cannot make a claim for personal injury if the trip ends in an accident – and let’s be honest, this is more likely than not.

The normal guideline is that as a passenger, you are an innocent party and cannot be at fault for the accident. This therefore entitles you to receive 100% of any compensation that is awarded.

However, getting into a vehicle knowing the driver has been drinking does have consequences for a claim for personal injury. The insurers of the driver of the vehicle will more than likely argue contributory negligence for passengers making a claim for personal injury in these types of circumstances.
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