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 severity as a result of an accident, they might each get £4,500 for the injury part of their claims.
But if one of them was unemployed or retired at the time of the accident and the other had a job from which she lost earnings, you can see that the working claimant will be able to claim more in total – because she will have a wage loss claim on top of her solatium claim.
The value of the pain and suffering aspect of a claim for different people will rarely be exactly the same because solatium element of a claim will be affected by factors such as:
- The age of the injured person
- The nature and extent of the injuries suffered
- The personal attributes and fortitude of the injured person – i.e. how long they take to recover and how fully they recover: we are all different.
- Whether the injured person is male or female (though this is becoming less important as a factor)
Lack of Detail in Reports Leads to Confusion
The problem with many of the case scenarios you can read about in newspapers and online is that they do not clearly state the age of the claimant or, more importantly, the way in which the awarded damages were broken down as between solatium and special damages
The reports are often written in a way which suggests that the awards were entirely for general damages / solatium but it is likely that in many, if not all, of the cases, the claimant’s damages included an award for loss of earnings and other financial losses.
Loss of earnings can be a substantial part of the damages in a case.
In most cases where a significant level of damages is awarded, the largest single element of the claim will be wage loss.
The point is that every claim is different.
If you want to compare your claim with that of someone else, you need to be careful how you go about it and make sure you have all the crucial pieces of information to enable you to make a valid comparison.
At the very least, you need to know how much was awarded for solatium / general damages.
Contact Us for Further Information
If you think you might have a claim for personal injuries, please get in touch with us for a chat. It is free and without obligation.
Contact either Peter Brash or Marie Morrison via 01343 544077 or complete and submit an online enquiry form by clicking HERE and one of us will call or email you back.
We will do our best at the outset to give you an idea of: the chances of success; how long your claim is likely to take: and the ballpark value (!).
