The majority of people associate whiplash with car accidents. To be fair, the vast majority of whiplash claims are caused by car accidents. However, you can just as easily end up with a whiplash injury from a slip, trip, or a fall.

Whiplash symptoms are caused by the ligaments and tendons in your neck, back and shoulders being stretched beyond their normal range of movement. If you are jerked suddenly, like when you suddenly slip, trip, or fall over something, the tissue can be suddenly stretched and thus leave you with the injury. So don’t be surprised if you are diagnosed with whiplash after being involved in such an accident.

You’ll probably start to feel the symptoms around 12 – 48 hours post accident. This is common for whiplash injuries. There is no miracle cure for the injury, and a lot of it comes down to managing it effectively with anti-inflammatory medication, pain medication, stretching exercises, and physiotherapy. Physiotherapy is something we can normally organise for you on a private basis as part of a claim for compensation.
Read More

Children unfortunately end up with cuts, bruises and sore heads from time to time after some vigorous playground fun or just simply because children can be unsteady. The question is can you claim compensation if your child becomes injured at school? Simply put you may be able to, but they can be very difficult claims and are very circumstantial.

Usually a claim such as this comes from an occupier’s liability perspective –  by this I mean accidents arise from defects on school premises such as faulty equipment or uneven ground, and it is the occupier of the premises (i.e. the school) who then have the responsibility. These claims can proceed just like any other occupier’s claim and therefore there are certain requirements to help your claim move along:

1. Photographs- Try and obtain photographs of what has injured your child!
2. Reports- Has the accident been reported to the school?
3. Witnesses details!

All of these things can help your child’s case and can make the claim more likely to succeed.
Read More

Under Section 2 of the Health and safety at work act 1974 employers are under a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the health safety and welfare of their employees at work is maintained. Therefore, if you have been injured whilst at work you may be entitled to compensation. Certain injuries sustained at work can be incredibly debilitating and can, of course, affect your future job prospects and therefore compensation may be a necessity.

There are many different ways that you can be injured at work especially taking in to account the range of industries and sectors that are out there. However, whether you work on a building site with extensive heavy machinery or you’re working as a care worker there is always the risk of sustaining an injury.

Of course in the majority of cases your employer will have protected you against these by putting in place policies, guidelines and by providing adequate training. However, it is hard to make everything 100% safe and therefore sometimes these measures simply do not protect you against danger. So who do you pursue if you are injured at work?
Read More

Ultimately as a passenger you normally have a guaranteed compensation claim so long as a collision took place. As a passenger, unless you did anything daft like yanked the handbrake or barked in the drivers face and put them off, you can’t really be held responsible when you have no control over the vehicle or the collision. As an innocent passenger, someone else is at fault, so you normally have a guaranteed claim.

As a passenger, you have the same rights as any innocent driver to make a claim for compensation. Don’t think you have no right just because you don’t own any of the vehicles involved – you’re still covered by the insurers!
Read More

There are so many regulations covering accidents at work. Many of these regulations have been introduced and amended over time to keep up with the modern workplace. Employers should adhere to regulations to avoid paying out thousands of pounds in compensation to injured victims. There are regulations covering all different types of jobs and hazards.

Here is a list of just some of the regulations currently in place:
Read More

Plenty of us now are sitting down in chairs at work. We trust we’re safe of course – it’s not normal for a chair just to collapse… is it?

In a workplace situation, if your chair collapses for reasons beyond your control, you may well have a good claim for compensation. Your chair is classed as your work equipment, and there are specific regulations in place that state that any defective work equipment that causes you an injury leaves your employer liable.

Even if the reason the chair became defective was totally out of your employers’ control, we can allege the defective work equipment rule and in theory the insurers should be strictly liable to compensate you. As long as it wasn’t you who was responsible for breaking the chair – say you jumped up and down on it or loosened a screw or something.
Read More

Many people, particular in supermarkets and warehouses, use roll cages. It’s an everyday piece of equipment needed for moving stock around the premises – so they’re pretty useful! Having worked with them in the past, they don’t half get battered around sometimes! In fact, we see a lot of claims for compensation caused by roll cages at work.
Read More

Put simply; it might be. But what you need to know is that are for more likely to under settle your claim for compensation if you settle with the insurers direct. Now, before you start telling me that the insurers have already told you they’ll pay you more by dealing with them direct as they avoid paying out legal fees, don’t bother! We know how the system works, and dealing with the third party insurers directly is very, very dangerous. I’ll explain why.

How to Value a Claim

There is only one way to properly value a claim for personal injury compensation. You must attend a medical appointment with a suitably qualified medico-legal expert. Your own GP does not count! The expert needs to be qualified to prepare a specific medico-legal report.

In most cases when people deal with insurers directly, they do not obtain a medico-legal report. Therefore, any valuations and offers made to you are based entirely on estimations and guesswork. Would you buy a new car based on what it ‘roughly’ might be worth? How do you know you’re not paying over the odds? Would you hand over your hard earned cash to a mechanic when you don’t know how much they will charge you for the work? Better yet, would you let a surgeon operate on you when he/she may or may not be qualified to do so? You can’t leave this stuff to chance.
Read More

We take on a lot of road accident claims involving car parks; they’re extremely common. From people pulling out of spaces without looking (usually reversing), or people not paying enough due care and attention to pedestrians, we’ve seen it all!

From the perspective of a driver, there is an increased duty to look out for pedestrians in a car park. It’s obvious that car parks will be full of people walking in between cars with shopping, and it’s expected that there will be mums trying to juggle a trolley load of shopping together with screaming kids who are running around and generally hating being there! The Highway Code normally stipulates that in situations where pedestrians are likely to be, the driver has an increased duty of care.

As such, if you have been hit by a driver who has not been paying enough attention in a car park, it’s likely we can help you out with a claim for personal injury compensation. Even at low speeds being hit by a car can do some pretty serious damage, which is why we offer the whole package – we recover compensation for your injuries, as well as losses like lost earnings or medical expenses, and we will try and assist with private medical care funded by the other side right from the start as well.
Read More

It cannot be surprising to learn that many personal injury claims are brought as a result of Road Traffic Accidents (RTA’s), especially when you think how many cars there are on the roads and how congested our traffic is nowadays. Due to the fact that there are so many claims brought about as the result of RTA’s it is necessary to have proper measures in place to deal with them in the right way when it comes to people making claims for personal injury compensation.

This is where the “Pre-Action Protocol for Low Value Personal Injury Claims in Road Traffic Accidents” comes in – but what is this?

Protocols and procedures are all very legalistic ways of saying that there are rules in place that say how something should be done. The Protocol sets out time-frames and deadlines for certain steps of the claim to be completed which apply to both Claimant’s and Defendant’s.
Read More