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.
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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.
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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.
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Claiming for compensation is not as complicated as it may seem. However, the thought of taking “legal action” for some people, is something they simply do not want to spend time doing as they’ll worry that it will take too long and involve attending court and all sorts of hassle..

So the purpose of this blog, is to simply put people’s minds at ease, and to ensure you that if you are thinking you’re entitled to compensation, then you should genuinely look in to making a claim!

So what is the procedure?

There are two mains protocols involved for the common compensation claims; the first is the Road Traffic Accident Protocol and the second being the Personal Injury protocol.
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Rules and regulations that employers have to abide by when it comes to manual handling activities in the course of your employment are strict and numerous. There’s a very good and rather obvious reasons for this; manual handling injuries tend to affect the back. Your back is of course one of the most important parts of the body, so injuring it can be considerably debilitating.

Whilst manual handling comes in to almost everybody’s role in some way, it applies to others far more in certain occupations. It applies minimally for me as I’m an office worker, lifting only boxes of paper or files on the odd occasion.

But a plumber, or a mechanic, or anyone on a constructions site or in a warehouse, are going to be doing a lot of lifting as part of their role. As such, proper manual handling training and risk assessments should be done by your employer to comply with the law!
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Many people up and down the UK work in offices and many underestimate how easy it is to be injured in an office environment.

By far the most common injuries faced by those working in offices are slips, trips and manual handling injuries; in fact according to Health and Safety Executive statistics for the year 2011/2012 up to 2,000,000 working days were lost to these injuries (source). While not all of these will have been in offices it is easy to see how they might occur in your office workspace.

Trailing wires from printers or computers, a bag or a coat that hasn’t been hung up or put away under a desk, amongst many other things in an office could all be tripping hazards. At the same time corridors between offices and communal areas that have tiled floors that collect water and liquids create a real risk of slipping hazards.
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There are a lot of compensation solicitors out there ready and willing to take on your case. However, unfortunately things are not always what they seem – something that advertises itself as a firm of lawyers, may actually be a claims management company that then refers you across to one of their “panel” of lawyers; so the people you speak to initially may not be legal professionals at all!

Usually these companies will put in their small print “we are a cohesion of lawyers” or a “group of lawyers” or something similar, which is a posh way of saying we are a claims management company who put you in touch with lawyers that we have chosen. Of course, this seems an absurd way of doing things as you can simply go to a solicitor direct and cut out the middleman! Not many people hire a middleman to find them a dentist, hairdresser or accountant; you simply go to them direct. So why should finding a compensation lawyer be any different?
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According to sources from the BBC (source), Aviva have a dream – a dream that will save you money. In a triple dip recession (or whatever stage we’re at with it these days!) we’re all in need of a bit of extra cash or being able to save a little extra money in the costs of living. Aviva Insurance claim they can help you out here!

Their proposal according to news sources is to “cut out middlemen who inflate the cost of claims” as they blame whiplash claims for the rapid rise in insurance premiums for cars. The middlemen, they claim, are us – personal injury law firms. What they are proposing is that injury victims go to them directly, allow the insurers then to value your claim, and pay you out without the need for paying legal fees.
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Although we use stairs all the time and they are in nearly every property, be it your home, at work, your local store or restaurant, unfortunately they can sometimes be the cause of some pretty nasty accidents and injuries! Accidents on stairs can happen for a number of reasons and therefore in this blog I will address 3 of the main types of accidents that we deal with every day involving stairs:

1. Defective stairs
2. Slips and Trips on indoor staircases
3. Slips and Trips on outdoor staircases

1. Defective stairs

The manufacturer or fitter of any stairs has an obligation to ensure that the stairs are free from defects and fitted properly to minimise the risk of any injury to their users. For example: the stairs should not have any protruding fixtures such as nails, they shouldn’t be all bumpy and uneven and they certainly shouldn’t wobble when people walk on them (this latter one mainly applies to metal and wooden staircases not concrete that stuff is pretty sturdy!). Another defect that may not be noticeable straight away is if the step has been created to be too high! Statistically if a step is just 1 inch of the common measurement more people are more likely to fall. If you have an accident because one of the above is present it is likely that you may be able to claim against either the manufacturer, company that have fitted the stairs in the property or even possibly your landlord.
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With so many personal injury firms to choose from it can be difficult to know who you can trust with your claim. Most of us would want the same thing when it comes to a personal injury claim – to get the maximum amount of compensation as quickly and as hassle free as possible. We would also expect professionalism, legal expertise, legal experience, regular updates etc.

Here at The Injury Lawyers we strive to give the best possible service to you, our clients. We have a motto that client’s are the lifeblood of our organisation. Without client’s the firm would not be operational as a business. The best way to obtain work is to do a good job and then people will not think twice about using The Injury Lawyers again. In addition, it gives us a great deal of satisfaction if clients refer our services to friends and family. We strive to do everything possible to bring your claim to a successful and swift conclusion. Just take a look at our Client Testimonials.

Of course personal injury claims do take time and at the outset no Solicitor can tell you with any great certainty how long your claim is likely to take. This is because all Solicitors work under the same rules and protocols. Insurers have set time frames in which to respond by, and in running a claim, we deal with outside agencies such as GP practices, hospitals, medical experts etc. A lot of a Solicitors job can be chasing matters, such as chasing a liability decision from an insurer. Ultimately if an insurer or third party is delaying the progress of a claim, action can be taken. We can seek the assistance of the Court in order to move the case along.
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