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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A recent report showed that during 2011, the General Medical Council (GMC) the organisation that manage, register, and licenses doctors practicing medicine in the UK, received a total of 8,781 complaints from patients

The three most commonly reported types of complaint were related to:

• concerns with investigations and treatment, such as failure to diagnose or prescribing inappropriate medications
• problems with communication – such as not providing appropriate information or not responding to people’s concerns
• perceived lack of respect for the patient – such as being rude or dishonest

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Claiming for an injury is often something that nobody knows they will do; after all, an accident is by definition something you did not mean or want to do. However, if you have been affected and make the decision to pursue a claim an important part of this is, of course, is making sure you have a solicitor that will get you the maximum amount of compensation you deserve.

Now, claiming for compensation gets bad press sometimes – however an injury caused by an accident can have devastating consequences; for example, you suffer from loss of earnings or in serious cases you can no longer pursue the career you were heading for. Of course this is a main concern for many, however there are others such as medical and travel expenses that start to mount the longer your rehabilitation time is.

So how is compensation calculated? Basically, the compensation you are awarding depends upon how serious your injury is and how long this will affect your everyday life. For example; if your injury is going to affect you for the rest of your life, you are entitled to more compensation than someone who’s injury will be fully recovered in a couple of years (generally speaking).
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It is a question that many people want to know and a question which we are asked time and time again. In terms of how long a claim will take from us taking it on to you receiving a settlement cheque, it is always difficult to say as it depends on a number of factors.

We as a firm pride ourselves on being efficient; we move cases forward as quickly as possible. However, to an extent we do rely on others such as insurance companies, the courts, medical experts etc.

A claim is likely to go through quicker if liability is not an issue and if the symptoms are relatively minor so only one medical report is required. However every case is different and at the outset any time frames given by any Solicitor would be effectively a guess.
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