Making a claim
What if I am partly to blame?
How much compensation will I receive?
What is a "No-Win, No-Fee" agreement?
Can I claim compensation?
Is there a time limit for my claim?
What will my compensation claim cost?
How long will my compensation claim take?
Will I have to go to court?
Making a claim
As soon as you contact us you can be assured that you will be in good hands. There are 4 questions that clients ask and we will answer these for you:
- Can I claim compensation?
- How much compensation will I receive?
- How much will my claim cost me?
- How long will my claim take?
One of our specialist claims handlers will be assigned to your claim initially. It will be their job to find out what happened to you and why. They will do this by completing a questionnaire with you. They may also need to contact witnesses to your accident.
Once we have established the facts we will advise you as to whether or not you have a claim for compensation. We will tell you whether we will act for you and will consider with you the best way to fund your claim.
If we take your case on it will be allocated to one of our specialist lawyers who will pursue your claim for you.
What if I am partly to blame?
One question we will ask you is whether you did anything that may have caused your injury. This is because if the defendant can show that you were partly to blame for your own accident, it will reduce the amount of compensation he or she has to pay to you. Lawyers call this contributory negligence. In other words, your own carelessness contributed to the accident.
A good example is failing to wear a seatbelt. The defendant may have collided with your car because he was driving carelessly. He is therefore to blame for the crash. However, if you were not wearing your seatbelt, then the amount of compensation you will receive is likely to be reduced by up to 25%. This is because your injuries are likely to be more serious if you do not wear a seatbelt.
Another good example is someone using a woodcutting machine at work. If the machine jams they should switch it off and make sure it is safe before trying to fix it. If they don't, they are likely to be partly to blame if it starts up while they trying to fix it and injure themselves.
If you are found to be partly to blame for your accident, then you will only receive a proportion of your compensation e.g. 75%, 50% or even 25% depending upon how much to blame you are.
We will advise you if we think there is a risk that your compensation will be reduced because you are partly to blame for your own injury.
How much compensation will I receive?
There are three types of compensation. General damages, special damages and future losses.
General damages (or compensation) compensates you for the pain and suffering your injury causes and any loss of amenity (interference with lifestyle).
Each case depends upon its own particular circumstances and a figure will either be agreed upon by the parties (settled out of court) or decided by the Court.
Before we can let you have any reliable indication of how much you are likely to receive we will need to obtain a medical report. This will set out your injuries and give full details of the treatment you have received and the long-term outcome.
Once we have that report we will be able to advise you on how much your claim is worth.
If you would like to get an idea of the amount of compensation certain injuries can attract then please click here.
Special damages means the financial losses and expenses that you incur because of your injury.
Under this heading we can include a claim for loss of income, travel expenses, medical treatment and any other losses or expenses caused by the accident.
You may be entitled to receive interest on your losses and expenses.
Future loss: depending upon how serious your injury is we may be able to pursue a claim for continuing future loss. For example, if you are unable to earn as much as you did before the accident or if you will find it harder to find a job because of your injury. You may need help with personal and household tasks or need special equipment or transport.
These are matters that we shall investigate more carefully with you after we have a clear medical outcome.
What is a "No-Win, No-Fee" agreement?
A "No-Win, No-Fee" agreement is exactly what it says. We will claim compensation for you. If you do not receive any compensation then you will not have to pay our charges, hence no win - no fee.
We guarantee you it will not cost you a penny. If you win your compensation claim then we guarantee that we will not take a penny of your compensation.
How can we do this? Because we are specialist personal injury solicitors. If you win your compensation claim you are entitled to have our charges paid by the defendant. We do not need to take a "cut" of your damages like other claims handling organisations.
This is our "Complete Compensation" promise to you.
Can I claim compensation?
To claim compensation we will need to establish liability. Liability means blame. In order to bring a claim for compensation, you need to show that someone else is to blame for your injury. It is not enough that you were hurt in an accident. The accident must be someone else's fault.
If you are not able to show that someone else is to blame, you will not receive any compensation. One of the first things we will discuss with you is how you were injured. If you are to receive compensation we will need to be able to prove (in court if necessary) that someone else caused your accident.
We will need to show that they were negligent. This is another term that lawyers use which means careless. We will want you to tell us why you think someone is to blame for your injury and how or why he or she was careless.
Blame can very often be obvious. If you are driving your car and someone drives into the back of you, then they may have been driving too fast or perhaps they were not paying attention. Either way, they were careless and their carelessness has caused you to be injured. They are to blame for your accident.
Similarly, if a pavement is so dangerous as to cause you to trip over and you are injured as a result, then the local Council may well be to blame for failing to maintain and repair the pavement.
In other cases, blame may not be so obvious. For example, if you are injured at work picking up a heavy load, then you may think it is your own fault. However, your employer may well be in breach of rules about how much it is safe to lift or you may not have had proper training on correct lifting techniques.
That is why it is important to get proper legal advice on the question of whether you have a claim.
You will bring your claim for compensation against the person who caused your accident by their carelessness. We call this person a defendant. We will advise you whether we think you have a claim.
Is there a time limit for my claim?
Yes. As a general rule claims must be brought within three years of the date of your accident. By bringing a claim we mean issuing proceedings in Court. Failure to do so within the three-year time limit is likely to result in your claim being statute-barred (out of time).
There are exceptions. The three-year limit does not apply to children or adults with mental difficulties. For children, the three years does not start to run until they are eighteen. They therefore have until their twenty-first birthday to bring their claim. For those without proper mental capacity, there is no time limit.
There is one further exception. You may not know until a later date that you have been injured. This is frequently the case in industrial disease and clinical negligence claims where the person may not become aware of their injury until some considerable time after the harm was done.
In certain limited circumstances, it is possible to argue that the three years does not run until you have knowledge of your injury. If you think this may apply to you then let us know.
It is also possible to obtain permission from the Court to bring a claim that is out of time. However, the Court will only do this in exceptional cases. It is always better to bring a claim within the three-year period than to leave it in the hope that the Court will allow you to bring your claim out of time. This area of law is complicated and if it applies to your claim we will let you know whether there is anything that you can do.We will tell you what the time limit for your claim is.
Because of these time limits, it is important to get specialist legal advice as soon as possible. Three years can sound like a long time, but in terms of a compensation claim, the sooner you begin the better.
What will my compensation claim cost?
We will do our best to ensure that making your compensation claim will not cost you a penny. We will discuss with you what funding options may be available to you.
You may have the benefit of legal expenses insurance through your motor, household or travel insurance policies. We will help you to check this and if you have legal expenses insurance under such a policy we will contact your insurers on your behalf to see if they will fund your compensation claim.
You may be a member of a trade union or other similar organisation that may be willing to fund your claim for you. We will discuss this with you. We may be willing to take your case on a "No-Win, No-Fee" basis.
If you ask us to help you with your compensation claim we will tell you how much your claim is likely to cost and how much (if at all) you will have to pay. We will tell you this for free and on a no-obligation basis.
How long will my compensation claim take?
It is very difficult to give you a clear idea of how long it is likely to take to resolve your claim at this early stage. Much will depend on whether the defendant admits or disputes your claim and also on how long it takes to obtain final medical evidence.
We will advise you at the outset how long we think your claim may take. We will keep you advised of any matters that might affect the length of your claim.
A claim involving a "typical" minor whiplash-type injury could take as little as six months. A claim involving a trip, slip or fall could take from nine months to perhaps two years.
Will I have to go to court?
This is very unlikely. Most cases settle amicably without having to issue Court proceedings. If we do have to issue proceedings in your claim, we would still probably be able to negotiate an amicable settlement without the need for you to attend Court.
