When Andrew Kay was 2 years old, he contracted meningitis. It is a dangerous medical condition, causing inflammation of membranes in the central nervous system, and affecting the brain. On 28 November 1975, Andrew was admitted to Seafield Children’s Hospital in Ayr, seriously ill. As part of his treatment, he received an injection of penicillin. The problem was that, by mistake, he was given a massive overdose of penicillin – receiving about 30 (thirty) times the correct dose. In such a quantity, the penicillin was toxic and it caused Andrew to suffer convulsions. He later developed paralysis down one side of his body, though it was short-lived. Andrew recovered from his life-threatening illness, but he was left profoundly deaf. He also had significant learning difficulties. A claim for compensation From 1978, Andrew’s Dad, partly conducting the case himself, made a compensation claim on behalf of his son, raising an action in the Court of Session. Before the judge (in 1984), the Continue Reading
Negligence: what is it?
Accidents which are no one's fault ... An accident is an event which could not reasonably have been foreseen by anyone and for which no one should be held responsible. If your injury is the result of such a mishap - a ‘pure’ accident - you will not be able to make a successful claim for compensation. ... Accidents which are someone's fault The modern idea of negligence dates from the 1930s. Negligence: what is it ? The basic definition of negligence that lawyers now use comes from the Scottish case of Donoghue –v- Stevenson. As a result of that case and other later cases, the law places defined limits on the classes of person who can claim and the types of injury for which they can claim. If you are going to be able to claim successfully, the person who injured you has to have been in such a position that they ought to have had you in mind when considering the possible impact of their actions in the circumstances. In practice, from the point of view of the person owing the duty of Continue Reading
Free of charge help with your personal injury claim from a solicitor (even if your claim succeeds)?
It’s natural to be suspicious if someone seems to be offering you something valuable in return for nothing. We are all conditioned to think that if something sounds “too good to be true”, then it must in fact be too good to be true. There are times when we’re vulnerable to letting our guard down – for example, if it’s something we really want – and system tools have evolved to provide some protection. For example, many spam filters will catch emails with “free” in the subject line because use of that one word alone indicates dodgy intentions on the part of the sender. But just because a service is offered as 'provided free of charge' to you, it's not necessarily dodgy as long as the service provider is getting by some other method - such as happens with solicitors working for claimants with personal injury claims. We invite people to ask us questions via our Google Business page. You can ask a question of Moray Claims on Google Business here. You can see the questions Continue Reading
Complementary therapies in personal injury compensation claims
In 2007, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, a bacteriological infection you get from deer ticks. Some of the main symptoms were tiredness , lethargy and “brain fog”. I was treated with antibiotics over a period of about 9 months, some oral, some intravenous. I recovered but had some annoying residual symptoms, including neck stiffness and pain. I tried a treatment from complementary medicine, called craniosacral therapy, through Healthworks in Forres, and got a lot of benefit from it. I consider my recovery was due to a combination of conventional and complementary medicine. I am a believer in the benefits of complementary therapies. But I relied primarily on conventional medicine and at all times after I had been diagnosed by my GP and referred for expert opinion, I was under the care of a consultant in the Infectious Diseases department of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Complementary therapies have a lot of advantages but in the context of a personal injury claim Continue Reading
How do you prove your loss in a personal injury claim?
What are the things you must do to prove your loss - and to minimise your loss - in a Personal Injury Compensation Claim? How easy is it to value a personal injury compensation claim? In theory, working out the value of your personal injury claim should be straightforward. What your solicitor needs to do is make a comparison between two possible factual scenarios: Both of these key elements are estimates or projections, to some extent. Both will carry uncertainties, to a greater or lesser extent. There are two important things to bear in mind when comparing "your life as it is in fact" (with the accident) with "your life as is should have been" (without the accident). Let's look at each of these in turn. 1. Did the accident cause the loss you are trying to claim. In some instances, this will be “obvious”. For example, if your accident did not cause any injury to your wrist, a claim for physiotherapy costs incurred in relation to the wrist will fail Continue Reading
Services Claims: Help From Your Family After An Accident
(NOTE: This is an updated version of a post originally published on this website on 24 October 2013). If you have been injured in an accident, it may well have put you out of action for a while with the result that you needed help from members of your family. The law in Scotland allows relatives to claim compensation for the time they give up to help you. This might seem strange: you would hope and expect they would do that anyway, without requiring any financial reward. On the other hand, if they were not there to help you, it would make life awkward, at best, and unmanageable, at worst, unless you could get help from some other source. So it makes sense that compensation should be available for them for the time involved in providing you with assistance. Their claim does not stand on its own; it can only be made as part of a personal injury claim by you, the injured person. Two Types of Services Claim There is the possibility to make a claim for two different types of services under Continue Reading
How Does Your Personal Injury Solicitor Make Money If They Do Not Charge You Anything?
One of my favourite rock bands is the Canadian trio, Rush. I have seen them live in concert 5 times between 1981 and 2013. They were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, having released their first album as long ago as 1974. By 1976, Rush were about to release their fourth album. Their previous LPs had been relative commercial failures. And so their record label encouraged them to ditch the ‘concept album’ format – with whole sides devoted to a single theme or story – which they had followed for albums 2 and 3. In fact, they stuck to their philosophy. Side 1 has the 7-part suite of the album’s title, set in a musically intolerant world, now less than 100 years in the future. 2112 (“Twenty-one Twelve”) went on to become arguably their most famous record; it was certainly their breakthrough. The final track on Side 2 is called ‘Something for Nothing’ and has the chorus: You don't get something for nothing You don't get freedom for free You won't get Continue Reading
How Much Does A Personal Injury Claim Cost?
Your solicitor’s aim is to maximise the amount of compensation you receive for your injuries and other losses. The “top line” value of your claim needs to be as high as possible, but that’s not all. You also want to try to reduce the amount you will lose in having to pay legal fees from your compensation. For most people who become a personal injury client of Moray Claims / Grigor & Young, you will lose 10 per cent of your compensation in paying what is called a "Success Fee". In a minority of cases, though, no deduction will apply at all. The basic difference is between claims covered by legal aid (no deduction ever) and claims we deal with on a no win-no fee basis (10 per cent deduction in most cases and, rarely, 20 per cent). So , how much does a personal injury claim cost? And how can you minimise what you will have to pay out of your damages? As we will see, it can mean the difference between receiving 100% of your compensation and only 80% - and the Continue Reading
Why you must check if your motor insurance covers commuting
In the bustling life of Scotland, commuting is a daily ritual for many of us. Even more so, for those who live rurally. Most of us will commute by car and, while many are familiar with car insurance to allow us to do so, many are not so familiar with "commuting" insurance. In this blog post, we’ll delve into what commuting insurance is, why it is important, and what are the consequences if you don’t have it. What is commuting insurance? Commuting insurance is a type of coverage designed to protect individuals during their daily travel to and from their workplace. This type of insurance coverage is usually combined within an existing car insurance policy rather than a separate policy. Its purpose is to specifically cover the risks associated with your commute, such as accidents or damage to your car. Why it is commuting insurance important? Statistics show that a significant number of accidents occur during peak commuting hours. With more vehicles on the Continue Reading
In Whiplash injury claims how important is speed of collision?
By definition, whiplash injuries are caused by low velocity impacts. The perpetual difficulty we have in describing whiplash injuries stems from the fact that there is, by definition, no structural pathology (i.e. nothing that can be independently verified by x-rays or other scans) They say that whiplash-associated disorders remain 'a diagnosis of exclusion'. In other words, if you seem to be dealing with 'appropriate' symptoms and nothing else would explain them, "whiplash" is your diagnosis because you have excluded all other possibilities. What is the mechanism of a whiplash injury? The mechanism of a whiplash injury involves the initial acceleration of the vehicle occupant due to force being transmitted through the vehicle in which they are seated - typically, a rear-end shunt of their vehicle. This results in the occupant to moving forward. In moving forward, the occupant’s head and upper cervical spine (neck) lags behind very slightly compared to the movement Continue Reading
Rise in fatalities among vulnerable road users in Scotland
Recently-released statistics have shown that as compared with 2022, 2023 saw a reduction in the overall number of deaths on Scotland’s roads. This is good news. However, lurking within these statistics, there was, unfortunately, an increase in deaths within the sub-category for vulnerable road users. Vulnerable road users include motorcyclists, pedal cyclists and pedestrians. The figures for serious injuries within each of these subcategories also showed an increase as between 2022 and 2023. The indications are that, for car users, road safety levels continued to improve. But if you are walking or travelling on two wheels, it is more of a bleak picture. Given that we are all being encouraged to engage in more active forms of travel (e.g. walking and pedal cycling), the signs are that the Government is going to need to do more to reassure the public that proper safety measures are being put in place (e.g. separated-from-carriageway active travel routes such as Continue Reading
What is at stake if you do not make a personal injury compensation claim?
What do you stand to lose if you do not make a claim for personal injury compensation in a situation where that would be a realistic option for you? In this article, we will consider 3 ways you can lose out if you don't make a personal injury claim. The general principles here may be obvious but probably not all of the details will be known to you already. Knowing these things is an important part of your "informed consent" - i.e. having all the relevant points to hand before making your decision: to claim or not to claim. Firstly, we will look at your “loss” due to your failure to give yourself the benefit of monetary compensation. In fact, that loss does not just apply to you; it can apply to others who would have to rely on you making a claim in order for them to be compensated as well. Secondly, we will discuss the fact that you only have the choice to make a personal injury compensation claim for a limited period of time. The right does not last forever. Once the right Continue Reading