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
Stress At Work Claims (Why They’re Mostly Not Straightforward)
Imagine you’re in a job where you’ve had to work long hours under high pressure over a couple of years and without any sign of change. You’ve complained to your superiors about the increasing workload, both in person and via email. You’ve requested an immediate increase in staffing levels. You’re swamped with work but no help arrives. Your health deteriorates to the point where you suffer a nervous breakdown because of the pressure. You are off work for several months. Before you go back to work, you have a meeting with your superiors about the causes of your ill-health – the main one being your workload. They reassure you by offering you help with your work from a fellow employee. On your return to work, you find that only a few of your files have been covered by co-workers in your absence. The paperwork has been allowed to build-up. Worse, the colleague allocated to help you is moved to other duties within a month of your restart. The workload continues to increase. It’s an Continue Reading
Food Poisoning on Holiday: Claiming Compensation for Injury
Going away on holiday gives us the chance to escape the routine of daily life, relax and rejuvenate. If you fall victim to a bout of food poisoning while on holiday, it can ruin the whole experience. You may end up with the feeling that you would have been better off staying at home. What can you do if you have been affected by food poisoning while on holiday and wish to claim compensation? While you are still on holiday You will need to get through the remainder of your holiday as best you can. You may need medical treatment and you should not hesitate to seek medical help if you get food poisoning on holiday. Apart from anything else, the health consequences of food poisoning can be serious if left untreated. From a claim perspective, however, suffering in silence - only to raise the matter on your return home - will make it difficult to prove the link between your illness and the hotel or resort where you stayed. If the hygiene standards at your hotel are poor and you 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
Will I Have To Go To Court If I Make A Personal Injury Claim?
Many people worry that, if they pursue legal action, they will have to endure the stress and hassle of a court hearing (known as a ‘Proof’, in Scotland). We get this question time and again: "Will I have to go to court if I make a personal injury claim?" Solicitors and other legal professionals are more used to the court setting, of course, though it is not stress-free for them either. We understand that the prospect of having to go through court proceedings is daunting, perhaps to the point that it may put you off the idea of making a claim entirely. Most claims settle "out of court" It is important not to get too hung up on the idea that your claim will have to “go to court”. The main reason for this is that, in the vast majority of cases, claims are settled out of court – either because it is never necessary to raise a court action at all or because the claim settles after a court action is raised but before the Proof. The parties on each side of the claim will Continue Reading