At The Injury Lawyers we deal with all types of personal injury claims. We deal with children’s personal injury claims too. In law a child is often referred to as a minor. In this blog I will attempt to explain the difference between a child’s personal injury claim and a standard personal injury claim brought by an adult. The first thing to note is that a minor is someone under the age of 18 years.

A child’s claim must commonly be brought through a litigation friend. The litigation friend must be an adult and is often a parent or guardian. The litigation friend must act in the best interests of the child at all times. The litigation friend must not have an interest in the claim. For example if a child is injured in a road traffic accident and a parent was the driver of the vehicle, that parent may not be able to act as litigation friend for the child, as they clearly have an interest in the claim. In certain situations a professional litigation friend can be appointed by the solicitor or the Courts.

The limitation period also differs in respect of children’s claims. The limitation period applies to all personal injury claims. After an accident or injury you have a window in which you can pursue a claim for injury and loss. This window is the limitation period. If the limitation period expires and you have not issued Court Proceedings on your claim, then you may lose your right to claim compensation.
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To say someone is at a disadvantage on the open labour market means that, as a result of an accident or injury, they are disadvantaged in finding work, holding down work, gaining a promotion – general career type things etc. You can try and recover compensation if an accident or injury had caused you some kind of disadvantage on the open labour market.

Awards in respect of disadvantage on the open labour market can often be quite big. However this will always depend on the facts of the particular case and the level of handicap.

Say for example you had been working as a painter and decorator all of your life and you sustained a severe injury such as the loss of your right hand. You would have great difficulty carrying on with your job as a painter and decorator because you may need both hands to hold a brush in one and a paint tin in the other. In finding alternative employment you are also at a disadvantage – the potential jobs that you could do are restricted because of your injury.
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Generally speaking if Driver B caused their vehicle to crash into the back of Driver A’s vehicle, then Driver B would be at fault.

This is, of course, a typical rear end shunt scenario whereby liability is usually attached to the driver who drove their vehicle into collision with the vehicle in front.

As a driver myself, this must be the correct decision as you have no control over the vehicle that’s driving behind you. However, in some strange and unusual circumstances, Driver A in the above scenario could be held at fault.
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It’s actually quite common for people not to be happy with their medical report – particularly in road accident cases. So why is this? Is the medical expert you have been sent to no good? Are your solicitors just not listening to you? What can you do?

To address something first, let me tell you the point of the medical report. We lawyers are, unfortunately, not medical experts. To win a claim for compensation, you need to commonly satisfy two key elements – that the injury was caused by a breach of duty, and that the injuries were caused as a result of the incident or accident. In legal speak – liability and causation.

We need a suitable medical expert to examine you, discuss your injuries and suffering with you, and look in to your medical past. The expert, who is independent and has a duty not to you, but to the courts, to provide their impartial medical opinion, writes a report containing all the facts needed for a lawyer to prove that your injuries were caused by negligence and value the claim. So if you are a genuine client, what could go wrong?
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When you think of serious injuries, most people think fractures – but damaging your ligaments can be equally as devastating, as I am all too familiar with myself! You think breaking your leg is bad? Try rupturing several ligaments in your knee requiring you to undergo a multi ligament reconstruction operation! Anyway – to define, a ligament is a soft fibrous tissue that connects bone to bone. You have them all over the body – and the famous ones to injure (for the footballers out there) are the dreaded cruciates!

There are several ways you can injure ligaments. In many cases, ligaments are stretched beyond their normal range of movement, and you end up with pain, swelling, stiffness, and the usual muscular related symptoms that will normally die down over time. However, things get a little more serious when you tear or rupture ligaments.

A torn ligament is exactly what you’re thinking – the tissue is torn; normally due to an overstretch far beyond the capacity the tissue has to stretch. Torn ligaments can be very painful – you will normally know when you’ve done it! The pain is normally enough to warrant you needing to see a GP or a medical expert, so you can usually get a diagnosis from them. For many torn ligaments – in the leg in the arm – after a few weeks or months you are commonly back to normal. However, some crucial tears like knee ligaments or elbow ligaments may require an operation.
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If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you are already aware of what foot drop, or drop foot (as it is also referred to) is. But just in case…

What is Foot Drop?
As a brief description, as I am lucky enough to have this deceptively simple sounding condition, foot drop is the inability to raise your foot up and move it left due to some form of problem a peripheral nerve; in my case, the Common Peroneal Nerve. It may sound like something small – but unfortunately, with this condition, you cannot walk properly without a corrective splint.
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Bouncy castle accident claims may be more common than you think. Unfortunately many accidents on bouncy castles can and do cause severe injuries – and these injuries are often to children or minors. Of course, bouncy castles can be a good source of entertainment for children but they are not as safe as we may suspect them to be.

One major issue seems to be with the variety of age groups that use bouncy castles. The danger here is that young children (such as at the ages of 2 to 10) are using the same bouncy castle at the same time as young teenagers (aged 13 to 16) for example. This is a recipe for disaster.

As we are all aware, children grow up at different speeds and some children aged 13 to 16 can be as heavy and as big as adults. This in turn causes a big danger to the younger more vulnerable children as they could be crushed or injured quite easily. Despite this danger being very clear and obvious, some children are still put into this dangerous situation.
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This is a question that we get asked time and time again. It is not always an easy question to answer. We always try to move a case forward as quickly as possible but at times we are relying on other parties (such as insurance companies and the Courts) to do this. We have policies in place to ensure that we move the case forward as quickly as possible at our end.

When a claim is formally taken on, that is when we have entered into an agreement (such as a Conditional No Win No Fee Agreement) with a client; we can start to prepare a formal Letter of Claim. The agreement is simply confirmation that we as a Firm of Solicitors agree to act on your behalf to pursue your claim.
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Please note that the information below is provided as a rough guide to how much whiplash injury claimss can be worth. Settlements should always be based on medical evidence to avoid the risk of under settling. Please do not take the below information as a definite value for your claim – always speak with a solicitor.

The JSB (Judicial Studies Board) whiplash guidelines provide rough estimates to what you could expect to receive when suffering from a whiplash type injury. As you will see, the brackets are rather wide ranging- this is because, realistically, nobody can EVER know how much your claim is worth prior to medical evidence. This is to avoid what is known as “under settling”.
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Although it is never a good idea to get in a vehicle when the driver has been drinking, it does not mean that you cannot make a claim for personal injury if the trip ends in an accident – and let’s be honest, this is more likely than not.

The normal guideline is that as a passenger, you are an innocent party and cannot be at fault for the accident. This therefore entitles you to receive 100% of any compensation that is awarded.

However, getting into a vehicle knowing the driver has been drinking does have consequences for a claim for personal injury. The insurers of the driver of the vehicle will more than likely argue contributory negligence for passengers making a claim for personal injury in these types of circumstances.
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