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