The whole purpose of manhole covers is to allow access to something below the ground but also to keep the area safe when access is not required. Basically, it stops there being a big hole in the middle of the street, which of course is not going to end well if you walk in to it!

However, some manhole covers can be extremely old and as many are made from metal, over the years, they have rusted and become unstable and consequently lead to serious injuries.

There are three main types of accidents that are caused by manhole covers:
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Ever seen the film the Invention of Lying, starring Ricky Gervais? It’s a great film; and I think it would be amazing if the concept could actually be true. Imagine a world where no-one can lie? It would be far better and fairer for those of us who live an honest life if all the cheaters and the scammers were unable to do what they do.

But how does this all tie in with a personal injury post?

Personal injury often gets a bad reputation. But to be honest, unless you’ve actually been in an accident and been injured, you probably just think it’s a “joke”.

People getting money for free! For nothing!
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We, The Injury Lawyers, deal only with claims for personal injury. We do not deal with any other types of law – so day in day out, our hard working teams are fighting for the maximum compensation for accident victims across the country.  So we can easily say, with confidence, that we are the specialist in our field.

As such, we deal with many injury claims for children. Naturally there is a need for more care to be taken when it comes to our little ones being injured, especially as they can be more vulnerable to serious injury.

It’s sad to hear when a child has been injured, but where it is not their fault, we will step in and make sure your child is compensated for the maximum amount they are entitled to recover, and we’ll make sure that the whole process is as easy as possible.
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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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Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 places a duty on the local authority to maintain the highway. The effect of this, is that councils and local authorities, have a duty to keep public highways in a reasonable state of repair and free from dangerous defects. If the local authority fails in their duty and a member of the public is injured as a result, then that injured party may be able to bring a claim.

The cost of maintaining the highway is paid for out of the public purse, and therefore the local authority only have finite resources each year to pay for the reparation of defects that occur. Indeed, these restrictions were acknowledged in the case of Mills and Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council 1992 where the Court of Appeal opined that…
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Injuring your knee is usually very painful. As an area of the body that’s prone to injury, you can get anything ranging from some straightforward muscular swelling like a pulled muscle or a stretched ligament to the agony of a torn or ruptured ligament leaving you unable to walk properly for a long time, and even needing surgery.

The problem is that it is too easy to twist your knee to such an extent where you end up rupturing ligaments and needing reconstructive surgery.

A torn ligament may not be so bad, and can be repaired surgically but may be prone to tearing again and will leave you in a lot of pain for some time – but if the whole ligament ruptures, you will likely need a hamstring or patella graft (or similar) where pieces of the hamstring or patellar tendon are taken and fitted in the place of the ruptured ligament (hence the term ‘reconstruction’)
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In order to recover damages in any personal injury claim, you must be able to prove that someone else was legally at fault for the accident.

Fault in this sense means that someone was careless, reckless or negligent as to cause an accident.

In personal injury claims, the person who is considered fault is referred to as the Defendant.
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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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