Passenger Compensation Claims – Can I Claim?
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
Which Regulations Cover Accidents at Work?
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
Chair Accident Compensation Claim at Work
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
Roll cage accident claims for compensation
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
Is Dealing with Insurers Direct Quicker?
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
RTA Protocol – When a Claim Falls Out
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
Once Personal Injury Liability is Admitted, What Happens Next?
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.
Read More
Manual handling injuries at work when working off-site
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!
Read More
Injuries that can Occur in an Office
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.
Read More