A lot of people are keen to know how much compensation they may be entitled to after having an accident – and when it comes to whiplash accident victims, people are often very keen to know what the average whiplash settlement figures are.

So what is the average whiplash settlement for a personal injury compensation claim?

Firstly I need to let you know how the system works – as there is a lot to consider. The whole value of the claim is based on the following things:

• The length and severity of your suffering
• The extent it has had an impact on you – some people are affected more (for example more active people may be unable to enjoy exercise and as such have had a bigger impact than someone who perhaps doesn’t exercise)
• Your losses – like lost earnings from time off work, medication expenses, general medical and treatment expenses, and any other financial losses or expenses on your part

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To give you the insight as to whether you have a potentially winning claim if this has happened to you, I need to explain in brief how the law works:

The Highways Act 1980 puts a duty on local councils and highways authorities to take all reasonable steps to prevent a defect on the highway becoming a hazard. So to do this, they must employ a system of inspection and maintenance to review roads and paths for defects that have formed. These can be potholes, broken kerbs, or anything that could cause a tripping hazard.

A reasonable system of inspection should take in to account how busy the area is. So a city centre road may be inspected every one to three months, and a country road could be every 12 months. So if they can prove that they have a system that is reasonable, they’ve kept to it, and that the defect that caused your injury must have arisen in between inspection periods, they can very easily defend your claim.

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You’re walking along and your foot suddenly goes through the floor – stopping you in your tracks and causing an injury – what can you do about it?

Well you may have a claim for personal injury compensation if this has happened to you. We would defiantly be able to look in to a claim on a No Win, No Fee basis; no one expects their foot to just go through a floor.

Injuries caused can be widespread – whether you twist your knee or ankle because your still moving forward when your foot falls through, or whether your foot is badly bruised and grazed from the friction of falling in, this kind of thing should never happen. If it happens in a public place or a place of work, there may be a claim against those is in control of the premises / the employer.

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The Occupiers Liability Act is an important piece of health and safety legislation that puts a duty on those who are in control of a premises to take all reasonable steps to avoid visitors being injured. So keeping the place maintained is an important thing to do – allowing a place to fall in to disrepair and become a hazard would leave the owners of such a place liable to compensate any injured victims.

Some examples of slips and trips caused like this could be:

• From a piece of concrete or wall or roof coming off and causing a trip of slip hazard due to poor maintenance.
• Slip on a broken piece or section of fallen off tiling – these specifically can be very slippery.
• Injury caused by a piece of defective chair or table or other fixture that has broken off through ill repair.

So what happens if you are the victim of such an accident? Can you make a claim for personal injury compensation?

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The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 are an important set of regulations that govern manual handling activities in the workplace. Any lifting and carrying in the workplace can be dangerous and lead to serious injuries; normally to the back.

Slipped disc injuries are amongst the worse as they often result in a lot of pain, a need for a lengthy period of rehabilitation, a lot of time off work, and possibly even surgery and lifelong problems. So if you have slipped discs at work due to carrying and lifting, can you make a claim for personal injury compensation against your employer?
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We’re very in to giving the best advice we can right from the start – so when I read an article from the Express that discussed children claiming from schools, I thought I’d better write about it given the nature of the contents.

The article itself is reminiscent of the majority media news stories about claims – rife with tired cliches like the “compensation culture” and “ambulance chasing lawyers”. For anyone who has had to make a claim for compensation having been injured through no fault of their own, suffering serious injury and losing thousands of pounds in earnings, these stories can be insulting.
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Cycling is a great way of keeping fit, reducing our carbon footprint, and getting around at little to no cost whatsoever; something that’s key given the obscene prices of petrol nowadays. But one huge disadvantage is the lack of protection when it comes to an accident when riding a bike.

Hitting a pothole whilst riding a bicycle can result in some serious injuries. Hopefully you’re wearing a helmet to prevent or reduce any head trauma, but you’d be lucky not to break any bones if you go flying over the handlebars. Some potholes are very hard to spot and simply cannot be avoided.
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If you rent a flat, the landlord is responsible to ensure that you’re not injured through negligence. This means that if you’re injured because something was wrong or defective in the flat, you may have a claim if the landlord was responsible.

For example:

• Slips due to an unrepaired leak
• Trip on an unrepaired defect – such as a raised flooring tile
• Hit by a falling fixture that was dangerous
• Electric shocks from poorly maintained electrical goods or sockets

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Getting manual handling activities right in the workplace is very important – injuries are easy to sustain when manual handling tasks are not carried out safely. That’s why there are specific regulations called The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992.

But it isn’t just the practice of lifting and carrying safely that has to be done right – the route in which a load must be moved also needs to be risk assessed as well. When carrying a load, especially a large one, your view may be restricted and you’re probably concentrating on moving the load safely and not what’s beneath you on the ground.
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Any claim for medical negligence can be inherently difficult to win. The reason for this is that certain injuries are not always easy to identify. Sometimes follow up appointments need to be made and clinicians need to wait to see how symptoms develop before taking action and making a proper diagnosis.

But sometimes, things are simply missed.

A knee ligament injury can result in serious and lifelong suffering and potential disability. It’s therefore important to get the right standard of care or you can end up unnecessarily suffering or being worse off if action isn’t taken early on enough. Even a simple tear can become a serious problem if not treated early on, with ligament ruptures often being the worse.
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