"Spine once more" found on flickrcc.net One of the frustrations for solicitors helping victims of accidents with their compensation claims is where medical records show that the injured person did not take up all the treatment which was available to them while recovering from their injuries. The “pain and suffering” value of your personal injury claim depends, broadly, on the severity of the initial injury and the length of time it takes you to make a full recovery. You rarely win if it's "you versus your medical records" Whilst your own evidence about the duration and extent of your symptoms will carry some weight, it is likely to be trumped by anything inconsistent contained in your medical records. So, for example, it will be difficult to argue two years after an accident that you have continuing shoulder pain related to the accident if your GP referred to you for physiotherapy at the 6-month mark and you failed to attend at all or stopped going for treatment before Continue Reading
Articles from our blog on the Claims Process
Below are articles from our blog which relate to the topic of the Claims Process.
Please also see our main page on the Claims Process
Fatal Accident Claims in Scotland: Increased Compensation levels
Claims by three members of the family of a man who died as the result of a road traffic accident in Glasgow have been awarded damages totalling £106,500. Lady Wise, in the Court of Session, decided that the award of compensation in a previous similar case had been too low. She set the damages level for each claimant by applying an uplift of approximately 50% on the awards in the previous case. Pedestrian crossing accident Gavin Currie was 25 years old when he was knocked down on a zebra crossing on 28 December 2011. He died in hospital 2 days later. The Court described Gavin as a “fine young man with good employment prospects and a happy and settled family life”. He came from a close-knit family. Only value of claim disputed Liability for the accident was not in dispute but there was disagreement about the level of compensation to be paid to each of his parents and to his brother, Euan, by the insurers of the negligent driver. Tension between Judge and Jury damages Continue Reading
Services Claims: Help From Your Family After An Accident
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 can 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 the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1982. Help You Have Received From Continue Reading
Why are some claims for the same injury worth less than others?
Comparing personal injury claim values can have you going round in circles If you have been injured in an accident and want to get an idea how much your claim might be worth, it’s easy to find sources of information on the internet that seem to be helpful. But it can quickly become difficult to reconcile the awards of damages received by different claimants. Often, you find two people with apparently-similar injuries who received very varying levels of compensation. Why is that? Solatium and “special” damages Personal injury claims are valued under two broad headings: solatium and special damages. In Scotland, your claim for the pain and suffering caused by your injuries is known as solatium (in other jurisdictions, it is often known as “general damages”). Special damages, on the other hand, compensate you for financial losses resulting from the accident – typically, wage loss. So, if we compare two women of the same age who each have a broken wrist of similar nature and Continue Reading
Personal Injury Damages Too Low (According to the People of Elgin – and Beyond)
On 04 May 2013 – a cold and windy day in Elgin - three of us from Grigor & Young / Moray Claims (Ann, Eileen and Peter), took a stall at the Scottish Theme Day run by Elgin Business Improvement District (Elgin BID). Thank you to everyone involved in organising it and all who participated. We ran a competition where we asked people to give their valuation of the injury in the following scenario. Female, aged 42, at the date of the injury and 45 at the date of the hearing, sustained a deep laceration on her posterior left thigh as a result of sitting on a toilet which had a jagged broken edge. The wound bled profusely and she was taken to hospital where it was sutured with seven stitches under local anaesthetic. Approximately two weeks later the wound became inflamed and antibiotics were prescribed. She was unable to work for 10 days and had difficulties sitting down or sleeping on her back for some six to eight weeks afterwards. She was left with a permanent scar measuring 3cm by Continue Reading
Early Settlement of Personal Injury Claims: Bad News For Everyone?
We see this happening much more frequently following accidents involving personal injury. People, who are at their most vulnerable following injury, receive a call from the other party’s insurance company and then a letter offering settlement of their claim at a derisory level. Why? Well, settling the claim quickly is invariably cheaper for an insurer and they know that, without specialist advice, you may not be paid all that you are entitled to receive. If you have suffered a personal injury, it is generally only possible to value the injury part of the claim properly by obtaining medical evidence. The amount your injury is worth depends on things like: the nature and severity of the initial injury; and the length of time it takes you to recover from the injury. Getting medical evidence, including a report from an appropriate medical expert, should ensure that the compensation paid out at the end of the day is fair compensation. And that means “fair” not only to you Continue Reading
If You Go To Court Will You Get 33 Times More Compensation For Your Personal Injury Claim?
We at Grigor & Young / Moray Claims recently dealt with a personal injury claim for a child who had suffered loss of several teeth following a fall in a local-authority-run play park - caused by a defective ground surface. The best settlement offer received from the insurers in negotiations before court action was raised was £750. Raising a court action resulted in a subsequent negotiated settlement of the claim at £25,000 – in other words, 33 times the best pre-litigation offer. Insurance companies are constantly putting forward the line that personal injury solicitors are simply expensive middle men. The insurers maintain that they can themselves fairly assess the compensation that is due and that, if you choose to deal with them directly, you will not be prejudiced. They will negotiate settlement of the claim with you and your claim will not have to go to court. The insurers say that the benefits of this solicitor-less approach go further. If less money has to be spent on Continue Reading
Your Personal Injury Claim: How Long Will It Take?
It is extremely difficult to say how long a personal injury claim will take but the factors involved are not all within the control of the other party or their insurers, despite what some people think. “I know they will probably try to drag it out for years,” is a comment we often hear from people considering making a compensation claim for injuries suffered in an accident. "They" refers to the person or organisation responsible for paying the compensation that is due – which is usually, but not always, an insurance company. Your personal injury solicitor will constantly be keeping an eye on what is the next step required in relation to your claim. At any given time, your solicitor should be able to give a best estimate of how much longer it will all take. Factors which could have an effect on the length of your claim Some things which will affect how quickly your claim can proceed to a conclusion are: How complex the case is; The severity of your Continue Reading
Contributory Negligence or Entirely Your Own Fault?
Hitting a detonator with a hammer to see what happens. Does that (bang) sound to you like a good idea? There are some situations where an injured person’s own conduct seems quite foolhardy in the circumstances and yet they have still been able to get compensation for their losses. In some situations, though, the claimant’s own conduct can be seen as such an overwhelming cause of their injury that it is taken to be the only cause having any legal effect – and the injured person in that type of case is often said to be ‘the author of their own injury’. A finding of that nature means your claim fails. In a Scottish case reported in 1957 (Donaghy –v- National Coal Board), a young miner sued his employers for damages for injuries which he suffered when he exploded a detonator by striking it with a hammer. He alleged that he had done this in the belief that, if struck sharply, a detonator would do no more than make a harmless noise. This claim did not succeed. The judge in Continue Reading
Accidents at Work – Loss of Earnings
Where you have been injured in an accident, a common consequence is that you will not be fit for work for a period of time. We often find that our personal injury clients who are victims of accidents in the workplace - in situations where it was the employer's breach of duty that caused the accident - only decide to make a claim at all because during their absence they receive wages at a reduced rate. It seems unfair that not only have you been injured due to your employer's fault but you then also suffer a personal / family financial crisis. Some employers have a company sick pay scheme, usually set out in the employee's written terms and conditions. If you have the benefit of a scheme like this, it will often mean you getting full pay for some weeks or months, then half pay, eventually reducing to nil. If you are injured and there is no employer's scheme in place, you may still be eligible for statutory sick pay (SSP), the standard weekly rate for which is currently £85.85 Continue Reading
New Injury Claim Value Guidelines Promote Gender Equality in Scarring Cases
When you receive compensation from a personal injury claim, in most cases, there are damages paid for losses beyond the personal injury itself, such as loss of earnings or replacement of damaged clothing. The claim for the pain and suffering associated with the injuries is known under Scots Law as “solatium”. In England and Wales, the term used is “general damages”. We value the claim for solatium by finding reports of previous cases from the courts where the claimants had similar injuries. In general terms, the valuation depends on the nature of the injuries sustained and the length of time it takes you to recover from them. Valuing personal injury claims is not a straightforward exercise because no two cases are ever precisely the same. Yet justice requires that there should be consistency between awards. It is now 20 years since the first publication of the Judicial Studies Board (“JSB”) Guidelines. The JSB Guidelines are in booklet form and are the result of the deliberations of Continue Reading
Contributory negligence: what is it?
By definition, contributory negligence can only come into play where your claim is going to be successful. The insurance company dealing with the claim will have accepted 'primary' liability and, in doing so, they accept they have to pay you some compensation. However, they want to restrict how much they have to pay to you and contributory negligence is one way they can try to do that. It means they are saying the accident or the injuries you have suffered were partly due to your own fault. This could be because: you did not take proper care when crossing the road and that was part of the reason for you being knocked down; you tripped over something you ought to have seen, if you had been taking reasonable care; you did not wear a hard hat on a construction site and you were more seriously injured than you would have been otherwise when something fell on your head; or as per the photograph at the top of this article, you were injured due to Continue Reading