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
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
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
When a court action may not be necessary in order to win your claim …
It can often be a frustrating game for consumers with possible claims against large organisations or corporations. If liability is denied by the company (or if they don’t even engage in negotiations) you generally face the prospect of having to raise a court action to press your claim. Expenses or costs tend to follow success in court actions so, even where you have what seems to be a strong claim, the economic imbalance between the parties can make the prospect of a court action quite daunting for you as the consumer: if you lose, you may have a large bill to pay. Canadian Musician, Dave Carroll, found a perfect way round this problem when United Airlines allegedly caused significant damage to his expensive guitar at Chicago Airport. He wrote and recorded a song and uploaded the video to YouTube. This reportedly knocked around $180 million off the share value of the company in the aftermath of its release. We don’t suggest you try this if you want to complain about Continue Reading