Where you have been involved in a road traffic accident, and you have suffered an injury, if the accident was not your fault, it is highly likely that you will be due compensation for those injuries, and any losses that directly resulted from your accident.  This is because it is relatively straightforward to prove where the other side was negligent in road traffic accidents.  For example, if a third party vehicle drives into the rear of you vehicle, and you suffer whiplash, then it is quite clear that the accident was their fault and you should be due compensation.  So, what happens then if you believe you have a claim for compensation? How do you go about getting this compensation?

The first thing you should do, after seeking medical attention for your injuries, is to contact a specialist injury lawyer who has plenty of experience in dealing with road traffic accident claims.  This is because their experience should mean that they know what they are doing, and they are best positioned to advise you on your claim.  If the other side gets in touch with you and they want to settle your claim directly with you, our best advice is: do not settle it.  It is probably not in your best interests.  You should seek legal advice first to see if their offer is a good offer, or whether it should be rejected, and you should instruct someone to fight tooth and nail for your claim.

So – how long do claims take?
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If you have been involved in an accident where you have sustained an injury through no fault of your own, you may well be entitled to compensation.  For example, if you have been involved in a road traffic accident whereby a negligent third party driver has gone in to the rear of your vehicle, and you have sustained whiplash, in all likelihood you will be entitled to compensation for your injuries.

Although you may not be aware that you are entitled to compensation, there is no doubt about it that the other side’s insurers are fully aware of your position.  As such, they may somewhat, out of the blue, get in touch with you and offer to settle your claim with you direct.  They may offer you £250, £500, or maybe even £750.  At first instance, this may seem attractive; after all, you were not expecting any compensation, and you think that the offer sounds great.  But please take a step back for a minute.  Should you not look into how much your injury is actually worth? Why not get in touch with a quality injury lawyer who may inform you that, actually, your whiplash injury is worth over £1,000?

The process where the other side gets in touch with you and settles your claim directly with you is called ‘third party capture’.  This is because the other side have settled your claim for compensation in full and final settlement and you cannot go back and ask for more if your injuries have worsened, and you have not recovered.  That is it – your claim is finished.  At The Injury Lawyers, we have people ringing up each week asking us about their potential claim for compensation, only for us to have to break the bad news that they have under-settled their claim, and that there is nothing we can do about it.  What we ask is that if you receive an offer for compensation, you ask yourself why they are making this offer, and where they came up with the amount.  Are they doing it out of the kindness of their heart, and because they care about your suffering? Or are they doing it because they know that if they can get you to accept their offer, they have saved hundreds, if not, thousands, of pounds in not paying the true amount of compensation they would have had to have paid you with an expert injury lawyer on your side.  I believe the latter is the most likely.
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The Injury Lawyers: Proud to never pay insures, claims companies, or other companies money for claims; all of our clients come directly to us, meaning we can dedicate all of our resources on to our fantastic service, and fighting tooth and nail for a maximum payout!

How do you make a claim for whiplash? Here is the best advice on what to do, and what to avoid.

What to Avoid
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Whiplash compensation, or compensation for any injury, is split into two heads of claim – one for general damages, and one for special damages. Damages means the money that you get to settle your claim. I will go onto discuss each one in turn.

General Damages

General damages is compensation which you can claim for your injuries. A solicitor will place a value on your general damages by looking at the factors below:
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Legal Expenses Insurance, Motor Legal Protection, and the practice of insurers allocating you a solicitor after a road accident is a topic we regularly cover as an independent firm that refuses outright to get involved in this practice. We have been advising people about the downfalls of letting your insurers refer a solicitor to you for years, and it now transpires that former Justice Secretary Jack Straw has done some investigation into the matter, and has spoken out against what he has labelled as the insurers industry dirty little secret.

Following complaints from his constituents, which Mr Straw followed up aand he has publically brought to light and blasted what he has termed as the “huge racket” of insurers passing on details to personal injury lawyers for extortionate fees; a practice we have been speaking out against for years. The BBC and The Guardian are currently reporting on the matter as we speak (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9524000/9524476.stm), (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/28/jack-straw-insurance-customer-details).

The reports confirm that Straw has said that “the practice had driven a surge in no-win, no-fee claims this year which put up premiums – all with the insurers’ knowledge”. We often see the insurers complaining that personal injury claims are driving up premiums – as you can see, it’s the insurers themselves that are akin to this apparent problem.
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At The Injury Lawyers, we have a vast amount of experience in dealing with whiplash claims – and that is why we can say with confidence that we fight tooth and nail to get you the best possible amount of compensation.

Causes

We tend to see whiplash as a result of road traffic accidents more than anything else. This is because whiplash is caused by a sudden jolt to the head which thus causes the neck to move beyond its normal range. The impact felt from a car crash can have this jolting effect on the neck causing damage to muscles and tendons in that area.
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Whiplash is a far from straightforward injury. The amount of suffering and the length of recovery can vary from victim to victim.  In fact, it is likely that if you are suffering whiplash, your pain will get worse before it gets better. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Whiplash will likely affect your back, neck, and shoulders, causing stiffness in the affected areas. You may also suffer headaches, pins and needles, and/or feel light-headed. If you have these symptoms and they seem to be getting worse, and you would like this ordeal over and done with, you may be reading this blog to find out the best way to treat your whiplash and how to overcome it. Unfortunately, there is not a definite cure or remedy – but there are a few things that you can do to help yourself which I will now outline…
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At The Injury Lawyers, it is our firm belief that our clients should receive 100% of their compensation.  In other words, if our client obtains £10,000 in compensation, The Injury Lawyers will not take a penny away from that, and will make sure that you get the whole £10,000.  So – How then do we get paid?  Simple: where your claim is successful, we are able to recover our reasonable costs from the other side, the Defendant.  This is exactly why we never charge our clients a penny; because we can seek our costs from the other side.  Too good to be true?  Read on.

At The Injury Lawyers we work under a genuine no win, no fee agreement with our clients.  This is an agreement with yourselves that specifically states as a contractual term that we cannot recover our costs from the Claimant (i.e. you).  We believe this is rather unique within the legal word.  This is because, although we do not believe many other personal injury law firms would charge their clients for their work, their agreement usually states that they will only seek to recover their costs from the other side; leaving the possibility that if they are unsuccessful in seeking their fees back, they may look to recover their outstanding costs from you!  At The Injury Lawyers, that is not possible.  We have specifically barred ourselves from doing so.  If you have an injury claim and you believe you will be successful, we will send you out our paperwork and you can check for yourself.

What if we lose your claim?  How do we get paid then?
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This is a common question that I hear from clients at The Injury Lawyers – not only at the start of their claim, but throughout the various stages. It can be a difficult question to answer, however; especially at the outset of a claim because a specialist personal injury lawyer would need various items such as a medical report to make an accurate valuation on your injury.

A specialist personal injury lawyer may use the following in order to value your claim;

1. A medical report – as mentioned in the opening paragraph, a medical report contains vital information assessing your injuries and detailing the various effects that injury has had on your life. A lawyer would use this as a basis for a valuation on your claim.

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If you have been unlucky enough to have been involved in a road traffic accident with a third party that was uninsured, or fled the scene of the accident and cannot be traced, where you are injured as a result you can still make a claim for compensation for those injuries.  This is because there is an organisation called the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (‘MIB’) who have been set up to deal with these types of claim where the negligent third party driver is either uninsured or untraced. 

Do not fear that because the other side have no insurance or have not stuck around that you cannot make a claim for compensation for your injuries; to be unable to do so would simply be unfair.  To make a claim for compensation, you are required to submit an MIB claim form.  This is relatively straightforward, but is always recommended that you have a quality injury lawyer on your side so that they can take you through the process and make sure that you get the best advice and maximum compensation you deserve.

At The Injury Lawyers, we have a wealth of experience in dealing with road traffic accident claims, and can both show you how to fill out an MIB claim form, and guide you through the claims process.  We work on a genuine no win, no fee agreement which means that we will not charge you a penny for our work.  This is because we can recover our costs from the other side.  This is even if you lose.  We can do this because we only ever take on your claim if we believe it has genuine prospects of success and so it is actually rare for your claim to be unsuccessful.
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