Our Personal Injury solicitors, Marie and Peter, have been handling claims on behalf of people in Moray for quite a few years now. Of the clients we have helped, probably none relished the prospect of making a compensation claim. Many had some sort of “objection” or problem in their minds, which they had to overcome before deciding to go ahead. The cynical “Compensation Culture” view is that it’s all about getting money. It has to be partly about money because that’s how the law of personal injury works but, in our experience, it’s not the whole story by any means. We’ve collected comments from injured people we have helped in Moray and this article sets out some of the most common motivating factors behind their claims. As you will see, some of the themes overlap a bit. Here are 5 reasons why people in Moray decide to claim for personal injury losses. You incur significant loss of earnings If you’ve been injured and have to take time off work in order to recover, you may not Continue Reading
Making A Claim For A Motorcycle Accident in Moray
You get an amazing feeling of freedom when you ride a motorcycle. You have the opportunity to enjoy the freshness and beauty of the countryside without being cooped up in a car. We are lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world as Moray and come the Spring, and more reliable road conditions, motorcyclists are to be found everywhere from the A96 to the smallest back road. Along with the pleasure of motorcycle riding, however, comes the risk of an accident. The most recent statistics show an increase in accidents involving more vulnerable vehicles, such as bicycles and motorcycles, which is a concern. If you have an accident while out on your motorcycle and suffer injury, how do you go about making a claim? Personal injury damages The most important claim is for compensation for your injuries. Motorcyclists are very exposed if there is any sort of collision and, as a result, injuries tend to be multiple, severe and, often, life-changing. We have experience Continue Reading
Should I Settle My Accident Injury Claim Directly With The Insurance Company?
If you have been hurt as the result of an accident, it is likely that the third party’s insurance company will contact you directly. You will probably have exchanged personal details with the other party to the accident and that information will be passed on to the other insurers if the accident is reported to them by their customer. Insurers have recognised this as a great opportunity to “get in first”. Where the insurance company for the other party sees that the accident is likely to be the fault of their insured, if they move swiftly, they can get to you before you are in touch with your own insurers. The “prize” as far as they are concerned is the chance to offer money to settle any personal injury claim you might have - before you have had time to get proper legal advice and intimate the claim. Third party capture There are different terms for this procedure, depending on your point of view. Solicitors who represent the interests of injury victims refer to it as 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 pay nothing to us out of your compensation. In other words, you receive your damages in full, without any deduction. In a minority of cases, though, a deduction does apply. 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 reduction has nothing to do with contributory negligence. Putting it another way, how would you feel if your claim settled at £75,000 and you only received £60,000 when, Continue Reading
Occupiers’ Liability, Landlords and Tenants
Occupiers' liability may apply where a defective drain cover causes an accident on premises In this post, we are looking at situations where you might have a claim for injury following an accident on premises owned or occupied by someone else. In Scotland, the Occupiers’ Liability (Scotland) Act 1960, requires occupiers of premises to take reasonable care for people who come onto their premises to see to it that they are not injured due to the state of the premises. While this is a statutory duty, because the obligation imposed is to take reasonable care, you still have to prove fault, as under the general law of negligence. Often this will mean it is necessary to gather evidence about how long the hazard in question had been in existence before the accident. The argument you have to counter is that, if the defect had not been there for very long before the accident, there was not sufficient time for the occupier to identify it and repair it before any accident happened and so Continue Reading
What is Moray Claims blog about?
Hello. My name is Peter Brash. What’s my line? I work in Elgin, Moray. That’s approximately half way between Aberdeen and Inverness in the beautiful North East of Scotland beside the shimmering Moray Firth. I’m head of the Personal Injury Department at Grigor & Young, Solicitors. Moray Claims is a trading name of Grigor & Young. We also have an office in Forres. Together with my solicitor colleague, Marie Morrison, we have over 40 years’ experience in dealing with personal injury claims for injured people in a wide range of circumstances. I am accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Specialist in Personal Injury Law. My colleague, Marie Morrison, and I are both members of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) and Accredited by APIL as Senior Litigators. The Elgin branch of Grigor & Young has corporate accreditation from APIL. So what is Moray Claims blog about? In posting to this blog, I’m airing informal opinions about legal matters – generally Continue Reading
Slip and fall? I bet that won’t look good on the dancefloor …
Dancefloors can be dangerous places. The combination of spilt drink, variable lighting and alcohol consumption means that falls can easily happen. Broken wrists are the most popular injury in our experience but leg injuries are also common. Claims based on occupiers' liability If you have been injured in this sort of situation, following a slip and fall, it may be possible to make a claim based on Occupiers’ Liability. The occupier – basically whoever has control of the premises – has to take reasonable care to see to it that people are not injured due to the state of the premises – which includes wet floors. Wet surfaces are not necessarily slippery? Unbelievable as it may seem, the courts have actually said that it is not self-evident that a wet surface is “slippery”. If liability for an accident is denied it can be necessary to get an engineer to carry out a slip-resistance test on the surface in question to provide a scientific measure of whether the floor poses a low, Continue Reading