by Personal Injury Claims
Local authorities in Teeside have had to pay out more than £600,000 in personal injury compensation payouts over the past three years in the wake of a wide range of injuries occurring on public land, it was recently reported.
Slips and trips on paths, paving stones, and even persistent potholes have been leading to a veritable flood of personal injury claims within the area, all of which have occurred after individuals injured themselves whilst on land user by the public which is either managed by local councils or owned by them outright. More than 100 successful claims since 2009 have led to in excess of £617,000 being made in compensation payments to those living in Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton, and Middlesbrough. with the most significant award originating from Redcar and Cleveland Council’s insurance providers for an injured leg sustained during pavement trip: the claimant was awarded a total of £34,176 for his injuries, experts say.
The same district saw a large compensation payout made for bruised accident victims as well, with an uneven path resulting in injuries necessitating a £16,857 compensation payment. Two separate cash awards could also be traced back to run-ins with bollards, with £1,597 going towards several cuts and grazes suffered by one person, while ‘multiple’ injuries caused by another collision with a bollard saw the injurd party receiving £4,837.
Other payouts include a Middlesbrough incident that saw £21,784 being paied out after ‘minor’ injuries were sustained due to a pavement defect and the £19,500 legal bill for Stockton after one person’s run-in with a verge fractured is hand, experts say.
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After one of its employees suffered a serious personal injury at work, one brick manufacturer faced prosecution by the Government’s Health and Safety Executive for regulatory breach, experts say.
According to legal experts familiar with the incident, the unnamed factory worker, a forty eight year old man, had been employed at the Hartlbury, Worcestershire-based plant owned by Wienerberger Ltd, a multi-national brick making company, at the time of the accident. The worker had been endeavouring to fix a fault on a brick packaging line that had halted production, but the conveyor belt of the production line suddenly re-started while he was upon it, leading him to become crushed as a pallet lifter descended atop him.
The plant worker sustained extensive bruising, several fractures to his ribs, and a severe puncture wound to his back as the result of the accident. Personal injury compensation experts say that the man’s injuries had been so severe that he could not return to work for six weeks in order to allow him sufficient time to recover.
The HSE was alerted to the incident and launched a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding the man’s injuries. Investigators discovered that a disconnected interlock that had should have been fixed to a gate on the perimeter safety fence of the machine had allowed the conveyor belt to re-start with the man atop it.
The HSE chose to prosecute Wienerberger Ltd for the health and safety breach, and the Cheadle, Cheshire-based company admitted liability at a hearing, leading to the company being assigned a fine of £20,000 for their role in the man’s injuries.
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While the Government crackdown on whiplash-related claims continues, thanks in part to the Transport Select Committee’s newest set of proposals to deter fraudulent and spurious personal injury claims, fears are beginning to arise that the proposed changes could lead to less personal privacy for motorists.
False claims for personal injury compensation and ambulance chasing solicitors result in increased motoring costs for honest drivers, with the average premium increasing by around £40 a year, according to the nation’s insurance providers. However, there are some campaign groups that have concerns with insurance companies receiving the personal details of drivers from statutory bodies.
The new Transport Select Committee’s report recognises how serious the impact of personal injury claims has on the cost of insurance premium prices, said Aviva General Insurance’s chief executive, David McMillian. Aviva agreed that reform is urgently needed in order to root out the causes of insurance premium hikes, such as inflated court costs and legal fees that accompany fraud and spurious whiplash claims, added Mr McMillian, who also called for the Government to continue its efforts to reform the civil litigation even further to reduce pressures on insurance providers.
The newest set of proposals include allowing insurance companies to access the DVLA database in order to check the driver record to ensure drivers applying for cover match. Permitting this sort of access would be expected to aid in cutting down on fraud and giving insurers more information in order to make better decisions concerning whether or not to insure a particular motorists and what rates to charge them, and insurers have pledged £1 million of their own cash to facilitate the implementation of the scheme, which should go into effect sometime over the next two years.
While being able to access the DVLA database will indeed be a help, more legislation is needed to get to the root of the problem, according to LV=’s financial crime head, Ursula Coulibaly, who added that the aim of the Transport Select Committee to reduce insurance costs and cut fraud will not be able to be achieved overnight. Dishonest, criminally-minded fraudsters are taking advantage of the current state of the system, she added, calling for a minimum speed limit for whiplash-related claims which would bar individuals for making whiplash claims if their vehicle was traveling under that particular rate of speed.
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One woman from Essex has recently been granted the right to make a claim for medical negligence after it was found that her paralysis was the result of a botched surgical procedure, personal injury claim experts recently reported.
Wickford native Rebecca Ling, twenty years of age, had been suffering from Prader-Willi syndrome, which caused a curvature of her spine and had necessitated her admittance to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital for a corrective surgery. Unfortunately, the young woman, who had just been thirteen years old at the time of the procedure, was left with paralysis from her neck down after her spinal cord was damaged, allegedly at the hand of surgeons.
Now unable to breathe without the aid of a ventilator, Ms Ling requires care from not just one but two care providers around the clock in order to help her cope with her quadriplegia. However, the young woman, aided by her parents Andy and Julia Ling, has since launched a claim for personal injury compensation against hospital staff; with the High Court’s recent ruling that the hospital is indeed liable for her injuries, the paralysed woman now stands to possibly receive a massive compensation payout that could number in the multiple millions of pounds.
Such a compensation award would enable Ms Ling to have the care she so desperately needs for the rest of her life. However, the NHS Trust for the hospital is understood to be planning to appeal against the decision of the High Court, which could lead to delays of at least an additional 12 months to any possible financial settlement, experts say.
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One Midland hospital has been named in medical negligence lawsuits brought by troops that have allegedly received inadequate treatment following their return from suffering wounds overseas, personal injury claim experts recently reported.
13 soldiers suffering injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan have launched personal injury compensation lawsuits over the past three years against The Queen Elizabeth hospital’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, located in Birmingham. Specifically for the care of wounded warriors airlifted back home from battle, the specialist site has been besieged by allegations of poor treatment, according to a newly fulfilled Freedom of Information request.
The specialised unit has been in the news before, as it has been awarded many accolades in the past to the point where the Prince of Wales paid it a royal visit in 2011, leaving defence chiefs shocked at news of the legal action. While, the hospital’s administrators, the University Hospital of Birmingham NHS Trust, issued a statement to the press remarking that it is the trust’s policy to not comment on any matter in which military patients are involved, legal experts recently commented that the care soldiers receive once they return home can lag behind front-line medical care by a serious margin.
One clinical negligence expert said that while the acute care provided by hospitals is quite often excellent, the less dramatic day to day needs of a wounded soldier are not being held to the same exacting standards. The reason behind this could be that many military general practitioners are newly qualified and lack the extensive experience of a GP that has been providing more than just emergency care for years, the expert added.
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The Medical Defence Union’s recent analysis discovered that ovarian cancer diagnosis delays are costing GPs hundreds of thousands of pounds for each medical negligence compensation payout.
The MDU says that more than 200 personal injury claims brought against GPs over the past nine years have involved doctors allegedly delaying cancer diagnoses. Out of the eight cases settled, seven of them were found to be the result of delays in diagnosis, resulting in personal injury compensation payouts of as much as £550,000.
The MDU’s medico-legal adviser, Dr Rachel Sutcliffe, commented on the recently revealed research findings, stating that part of the problem behind diagnostic delays in regards to ovarian cancer is that the condition’s typical symptoms, such as bloating and stomach pain, have similarities with several other more common and less life-threatening conditions. The failure in diagnosing ovarian cancer correctly or in a timely manner is not necessary a case of negligence due to the non-specific nature of the illness, Dr Sutcliffe added.
However, the MDU adviser was quick to say that doctors need steps to exclude the possibility of ovarian cancer as swiftly as possible due to seriousness of the medical condition. The importance of making timely and appropriate referrals for further procedures, treatment, or assessment cannot be understated, Dr Sutcliffe also said, especially in light of how deadly and debilitating ovarian cancer can be if it remains undiagnosed and untreated.
Medical experts say that women need to have regular examinations to ensure they remain in good health, especially if they are planning to start a family.
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One 30 year old labourer is poised to receive a massive personal injury compensation payout of at least five figures, according to his personal injury solicitors.
John Bell, father of two, of Earsdon Close, West Denton, Newcastle, suffered devastating injuries to his hand when it was crushed by a steel beam in a personal injury at work that made it impossible for him to return to his job as a steel erector for two years. The man’s injuries left not only him without financial support, but his 11 year old daughter Kaitlyn, his four year old son Thomas, and his partner Leanne Brown with little recourse as well, experts said.
Mr Bell had been working in a team of two at the time of the accident, when he was engaged in fitting a steel beam weighing one tonne in between two columns. The worker was about tighten the beam into place with a spanner after it had been lowered into its place through the use of an overhead crane, Mr Bell’s hand was injured severely when the beam suddenly shot into the air, suffering deep cuts to his middle finger, palm, and wrist and sustaining damage to his ligament and tendons.
The steel worker described the aftermath as being ‘left with a hole’ in his hand and experiencing sharp pains after the incident. Mr Bell took an intense physiotherapy course and attempted to return to his position after just 14 weeks, but the injuries he sustained to his hand proved to be debilitating, precluding him from working for an extended period of time.
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With new investigations revealing on site safety levels across the country dangerously below standards, increasing numbers of construction workers may be soon to be making more personal injury claims as a result.
With Health and Safety Executive inspectors visiting more than 3,200 sites and 4,000 contractors, the regulatory body found that one out of five work sites could not pass safety checks, leaving employers exposed to the possibility of expensive fines and charges in the wake of a personal injury at work. More than 580 projects were found to be putting workers at risk through practices, which caused the HSE to issue more than 800 enforcement notices – and with some sites found to be so unsafe that it would be unlawful to allow work to continue, 603 sites saw work cease immediately in order to minimise the risk of personal injury compensation cases.
The HSE’s construction division’s chief inspector,Philip White, commented on the findings, indicating that while the sampling of work sites was just a small snapshot of the current construction sector, the sheer volume of unsafe work at height notices served was still at unacceptable measures. The volume of notices was particularly egregious when taken into account how straightforward and well-known it is to implement safety measures to remediate the instances of falls from height, Mr White continued, adding that far too many contractors are persistently putting their own lives at risk – or the lives of others – and the HSE will take action without hesitation where standards are not met.
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One woman from Lancashire recently won her medical negligence claim against her dentist, earning a personal injury compensation award of £8,000 for her pain and suffering after a botched dental procedure.
Personal injury claim experts writing for the Blackpool Gazette newspaper report that Shelley Farrell, forty nine years of age, had been left suffering the effects of an improperly treated abscess and botched tooth extraction for the past three years. The woman, from Lesley Court, in St Annes, said that she had gone to the St Annes Dental Clinic to visit her dentist after fears arose that she may have developed an abscess, yet Dr Tom Kerr, her dentist, sent her home after informing her that there were no indications of any problems.
However, Ms Farrell returned just five days later, only to have the dentist dismiss her again, even though her face had become badly swollen. Nearly a month passed before the woman was actually given any treatment, and the abscess had gone untreated for so long that she needed to have it lanced in order to alleviate the infection.
Ms Farrell claims she was also told that there was no way to save her tooth. However, she says that Dr Kerr had to shatter the bone around the tooth in order to remove it.
The entire process has finally concluded, with the woman being awarded a settlement out of court for £8,000 in medical negligence compensation damages. Despite the high compensation award, the dentist has refused to admit liability for Ms Farrell’s pain and suffering.
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A man who suffered a personal injury at work, leading to an animal feed machine severing his finger, may be considering a personal injury claim in the wake of the Health and Safety Executive successfully prosecuting his employer, experts say.
The 25 year old man, whose identity was not released to the public, lost his finger in February of 2010 at the Garstang, Lancashire premises of Merit (Feeds and Storage) Ltd due to a blockage that had occurred in an animal feed pellet manufacturing machine. According to personal injury compensation experts familiar with the incident, the worker had been attempting to clear the blockage by hand when he was caught by the inner workings of the machine and his hand was dragged between a pair of rollers, suffering extensive crush injuries that necessitated the amputation of his middle finger.
The HSE, in its role as an investigator of work accidents that lead to serious injuries, discovered that the pellet manufacturing machine had at one time been fitted with a lock that prevented the machine from being accessed whilst it was in operation. However, at the time that the incident occurred, the lock had no longer been in use.
Merit (Feeds and Storage) Ltd was prosecuted by the HSE for the role the company played in the injury their employee sustained by neglecting to prevent access to the dangerous inner workings of the machine under regulations concerning the provision and use of work equipment. The firm was given a fine of £2,000 for their failings in a recent hearing.
One HSE spokesperson spoke to the press after the prosecution, reiterating the need for all firms to properly guard any machinery they use to manufacture goods in order to avoid needless injuries to their workers.
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The legal aid bill working its way through Parliament suffered yet another setback, as the government’s proposals to reduce legal aid in medical negligence cases and for children were shot down in the House of Lords last week.
Peers have done even more damage to the new bill over and above the nine amendments pushed upon it during the proposed legislation’s report stage. The cost-cutting measures put forward by the Ministry of Justice were met with even more limitations, as peers voted by a margin of 12 to ensure that legal aid funding to children remain preserved in order to not have to present their own personal injury claims in court.
Gold medal paralympian Lady Grey-Thompson submitted an amendment in opposition to the plans of the government to save £6 million annually through the removal of as many as 6,000 young children from being entitled to legal support. The wheelchair-bound woman argued during the Lords debate that children, who lack the ability to represent themselves due to their age and inexperience, would face serious difficulties by the proposed cuts, as it is essentially asking these children to argue cases against taxpayer-funded barristers, and that it would be both unfair and unjust to not provide these children with personal injury lawyers of their own.
Lord Cormack, the former Conservative MP, came out in support of her comments, adding that while the deficit does indeed need to be cut, such a relatively small sum would not make a difference here in the long run.
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The family of an Eastbourne police officer left comatose in the wake of a car accident with another driver has decided to bring a personal injury compensation claim for £300,000 in damages, experts say.
Police sergeant Wendy Dowman, forty one years of age, was left in a coma due to her injuries when she was struck by a trailer that had become detached from a nearby Land Rover as she drove through Hellingly, according to the Eastbourne Herald newspaper. Ms Dowman was rushed by air ambulance to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel in the wake of the incident, where she was transferred to a Salisbury specialised care unit after it was discovered that she had been suffering from severe brain injuries.
Ever since she was involved in the accident, the police sergeant has been in a semi-coma, needing around the clock care and necessitating her to be fed through the use of a tube. The driver of the Land Rover, Jonathan Hobden, is now being sued for personal injury compensation on the grounds that he had neglected to secure the trailer by forgetting to put the safety pin in his vehicle’s tow bar.
Other allegations made against Mr Hobden included that he had been driving the Land Rover while it was not properly fitted with a braking cable, and that he had neglected to control and manage the trailer in the proper manner. The case is scheduled to be heard in London’s High Court in the near future.
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One helmet manufacturing firm worker suffered catastrophic personal injury when his arm was trapped within a hydraulic press, experts say.
James McKay, forty seven years of age, had been working at Helmet Integration Systems Ltd, operating a machine on the night shift used to make fire helmets shortly before the personal injury at work occurred. The machinery, which functions by joining two halves made from fibreglass, uses the application of heat to fuse them together.
Mr McKay, who was working alone at the time, had fitted the press with two separate halves of a helmet, but noticed that the bottom half had become loose from its position just as the upper half was descending into place. To remedy the situation, the worker opened the safety gates on the machine, assuming that doing so would prevent the press from operating, and slipped both of his arms within the machinery in order to make adjustments to the lower helmet mould.
However, the top half of the press continued to descend, trapping Mr McKay’s arms between both moulds and causing not just severe burns but extensive crush injuries. Personal injury compensation experts say that the injured man has had several surgical procedures in order to repair the damage, but one of his arms needed to be amputated after it developed an infection.
The Government’s Health and Safety Executive investigated incident, making the discovery that there were inherent design flaws in the hydraulic press that the man had been working on at the time of the incident. The press, provided and designed by Composite Integration Ltd, was designed in such a way that, even if the emergency stop button was depressed or when the safety guard was lifted, the upper cavity would continue to fall.
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It was recently revealed that a landmark personal injury compensation victory will be decided in favour of families with relatives slain by asbestos-related cancers, with the Supreme Court understood to inform insurers to honour the personal injury claims of these deceased workers.
Four insurers have been attempting to minimise the amount of compensation payable to 6,000 families who have suffered the death of a member due to mesothelioma, a lung cancer caused from inhalation of the deadly fibres. However, these families are now set to receive more than £600 million from pending injury claims once the Supreme Court rules in their favour, with the potential legal bill raising to a high of £5 billion across 25,000 families once taking future claims to be brought into consideration.
This particular case has been making its way through the courts steadily since 2006, first hitting the Court of Appeal before rising to the High Court, and has been one of the longest, most protracted cases over the course of legal history. The majority of those that originally brought the claim have since succumbed to mesothelioma and other asbestos-related deaths, leaving their surviving relatives to wait on the court’s final decisions.
The largest killer in the British workplace, exposure to asbestos is thought to result in more than 4,000 fatalities on a yearly basis, and is higher than road traffic accident death tolls. Asbestos fibres can linger in a patients respiratory tract for 50 years until their carcinogenic affect is achieved, leading to UK deaths not peaking for another four years.
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An apprentice mechanic sustained a personal injury at work when he caught fire whilst on the job at his job in Derbyshire, injury claims experts recently reported.
The apprentice, a twenty three year old man whose name has not become known to the public due to privacy and legal concerns, had been working for Swadlincote Diesel Fuel Injection Services Ltd at the time of his personal injury. He and a colleague had been burning rubbish in the Swadlingcote-based firm’s Cadley Hill Industrial Estate premises, pouring waste fuel on the flames in order to feed the fire.
However, the young mechanic was immediately engulfed in an explosion upon adding the waste fuel to the fire and set his overalls aflame, according to statements presented in a hearing at Derby Magistrates’ Court. The twenty three year old apprentice was able to protect his face and head from the searing heat, but his hands, arms, and neck all sustained severe burn injuries in the incident.
The Government’s Health and Safety Executive investigated the accident, discovering that the Swadlincote-based company specialising in diesel fuel injection technologies, had no safe working systems in place in regards to the use, storage, and handling of flammable substances such as diesel fuel. As a result of the HSE’s successful prosecution of the firm, Swadlincote Diesel Fuel Injection Services admitted breaching health and safety regulations, earning them a fine of £8,000.
It is unknown at this time if the injured man will be making a compensation claim against his employers for his injuries, though legal experts say the probability of such an occurrence could be high.
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One eighteen year old factory worker sustained serious personal injury after falling from the back of a shipping container that was being unloaded.
The teenage worker, whose name has not been made known to the public, had been working at the Leicestershire-based Simtom Food Products Ltd’s factory in Merry Lees, when the personal injury at work occurred. The unnamed teenager had been tasked with unloading barrels that had been within the shipping container and stacked on wooden pallets.
According to personal injury compensation experts that were present at a hearing at Leicester Magistrates’ Court, the young man had been perched upon a pallet that had been raised into position through the use of a forklift truck. However, the young man fell nearly two metres to the ground as he was moving from one pallet to another in his attempt to remove the barrels from the shipping container, spraining his shoulder, his wrist, and sustaining severe bruises to his abdomen in the fall, keeping him from returning to work for a period of several weeks as he recovered from his injuries.
The Health and Safety Executive prosecuted one of the firm’s partners, Mr Jaisukh Chandarana, for his role in the young man’s injuries. After Mr Chadarana admitted to breaching work at height regulations, the company executive was slapped with a fine of £7,500.
An inspector for the HSE spoke out after the hearing, remarking that using a forklift truck to raise employees was a completely unacceptable action. It was only through dumb luck that the eighteen year old worker had not suffered even more serious or debilitating injuries, the inspector also said.
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Medical negligence experts say that the death of a pensioner may be the result of doctors failing to administer a safe dosage of a common painkiller.
Personal injury experts writing for the Mirror newspaper say that great grandmother Cynthia Shearer was given an excessive dose of paracetamol, a common analgesic and fever reducer, after she was admitted to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in order to treat her fractured hip. Doctors administered Ms Sheared an amount of painkillers that exceeded the recommended safe dosage by a staggering 85 per cent throughout the initial 48 hours of her hospital stay, it was revealed.
Less than three weeks later, the pensioner, suffering from multiple organ failures caused by the massive overdose, died at the age of sixty eight. Medical negligence solicitors say that Ms Shearer’s low weight had not been taken into account by doctors when determining the proper dosage to administer to her.
The sixty eight year old woman had suffered from a gastric condition that led to her five-and-a-half stone weight prior to her death. Ms Shearer should not have been given any more paracetamol than would have been given to a child, experts say.
An inquest undertaken in the wake of the woman’s death discovered that hospital staff had a fatal lack of knowledge in regards to proper painkiller guidelines. Comments made by Coroner John Ellery include statements indicating that this failure of awareness was not only common in nurses and junior doctors, but up to and including pharmacists, senior medical staff, and even the chief pharmacist at the hospital.
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After one of its workers was electrocuted in a personal injury at work, the managing director of the contracting firm that employed him faced prosecution by the Government’s Health and Safety Executive, personal injury claims experts recently reported.
Polish immigrant Krzysztof Jabczanik, had been employed by St Albans-based Fras Contractors Lmited at the time of the incident, which occurred while he had been working to repair damage to a floodlight at a North Acton location. However, while Mr Jabczanik was undertaking the repairs, the worker suffered a massive shock upon coming into contact with a live junction box, suffering severe burn injuries to his left hand and sustaining enough electrocution-related damage to necessitate his placement into a medically-induced coma after being rushed to hospital, said personal injury compensation experts familiar with the case.
The HSE investigated the circumstances surrounding the man’s injuries, discovering that the junction box’s cover had been removed prior to the isolation of the electrical circuit. The supervisor at the worksite, Adam Fras, registered electrical engineer and managing director for Fras Contractors, had failed to ensure that the junction box was safe before Mr Jabczanik began to carry out repairs, according to a statement given by the HSE at a hearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Mr Fras admitted to breaching health and safety regulations concerning electricity at work, leading to a fine of £1,000 for the personal director. Moreover, his company was fined an additional £1,500 for being in breach of Work at Height Regulations as well.
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A Southampton-based roofing company faced prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive after one of its workers suffered a serious personal injury at work after he fell through a skylight, experts say.
Personal injury experts say that the unnamed man, a fifty seven year old foreman employed by Focus (Southampton) Ltd, had been on site at a building project for the removal and replacement of an asbestos roof on a building located in Fareham’s Kiln Acre Industrial Park when the incident occurred. The man plummeted through a fragile skylight, falling to the ground below and suffering severe injuries, including two broken wrists, two broken eye sockets, swelling to the brain, and neurological damage, according to his personal injury lawyers.
The HSE investigated the scene of the accident, discovering that the man’s employer had neglected to conduct a proper risk assessment regarding the possibility of workers falling from height. The company had also not provided equipment necessary for working on the roof in a safe manner, the HSE investigation revealed.
As a result of their inaction, Focus (Southampton) Ltd, located in Southampton, on Norham Avenue, was given a fine of £2,000 during a hearing at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court after the company admitted to breaching work at height regulations. Focus Ltd was also ordered to pay a total of £1,000 in court costs for the role the firm played in the unnamed man’s injuries.
Falls from height are responsible for a large proportion of injuries that occur at work in the UK, with official figures from the HSE revealing that in excess of 4,000 such accidents occur on a yearly basis.
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A group of personal injury lawyers recently said that there are too many Brits suffering from asbestosis that are dying without access to proper levels of personal injury compensation due to inaction on the part of the government.
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, a not-for-profit campaign group, recently discovered figures indicating that death rates for asbestos-related illnesses in Scotland have been on the rise. The lung cancer thought to be caused by the deadly fibres called mesothelioma was found to be responsible for 177 deaths in 2010, while 2006 and 2007 figures indicated only 149 and 140 fatalities respectively.
A large number of workers who are diagnosed with the deadly illness have no recourse to pursue damages claims, as it is an impossibility to trace the employers or the insurance firms of the employers who initially saw them exposed to asbestos. Symptoms regularly do not manifest for decades after exposure, with insurance documents becoming destroyed and lost and employers going out of business.
The government made a pledge in 2010 for the establishment of a ‘last resort’ fund in order to provide a safety net for workers denied compensation through such instances. However, no action has yet been taken, said David Bott, president of APIL, leading to workers that are sick and dying from being barred from bringing valid cases.
MP Jim Sheridan, the occupational safety and health committee chairman, also commented on the issue, stating that those suffering from asbestos-related illnesses are left with no way to obtain the compensation they need to provide with them with at least some measure of comfort in their final days without the last resort safety net fund.
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One midlands council worker has made a personal injury claim against his employer for £70,000 after he fell in the snow and suffered injuries last winter, injury claims experts recently reported.
In an ironic turn of events, a park warden employed by Leicester City Council had been warning the public against the danger of snow and ice when he fell while on the job, suffering painful injuries. His employers, who recently made the admission that something could have been done to prevent the injuries sustained to the anonymous warden’s arms, wrist, neck, and back, have recently approved his personal injury compensation claim, with the £70,000 in damages going towards both the man’s pain and suffering and also to pay the court costs and legal fees involved in the legal action.
The Mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby, commented on the incident, remarking that the council must take its responsibilities to both the members of the public and to its own staff in a serious manner. However, the mayor was quick to add that while this was important, the council also must take steps that things do not spin out of control, stating that steps must be taken to prevent it from going mad on health and safety enforcement.
In the wake of the compensation claim, the local authority has taken steps to avoid similar injuries from occurring in the future by stocking up on studded slip-on shoe soles. Cold weather conditions always bring a heightened risk of injury, experts say, which prompts individuals and organisations alike to limit risk in any way that they can.
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I can’t say as I’m exactly au fait with the figures but personal injury claims against councils must be second only to whiplash injury claims in the UK in the table of payouts. Every week, it seems that one council or another is releasing huge annual totals of claims against it, so far as the data protection act will allow, and they are often around the seven-figure mark. No doubt, some of the more densely-populated councils have even higher personal injury compensation claim bills, such as Birmingham and London – those figures must be just scary.
The latest borough to announce its 2011 total is West Sussex County Council, who have just released their scant details via the East Grinstead Courier and Observer. Their bill ran up payouts of almost £1.2M in personal injury compensation claims, according to details released to the newspaper from an application it made to the government’s Freedom of Information department.
The actual figure was £1,193,013, paid out to both members of the public and its staff who had cause to make personal injury compensation claims against them. This figure would have been higher had it not been for six of the seventy eight lodged claims being unsuccessful, unlike the seventy-two cases that won the compensation for the victims due to negligence by the county council.
Now this is where I lose the thread of how the cogs in the personal injury system work. Earlier this week, we reported on a man having his arm severed at the shoulder in an accident at work after a machine that turned wood into chippings caught on either his hi-vis vest or glove. The company were found negligent, fined £9,000 and ordered to pay £6,500 costs.
Yet, compare that to some of these personal injury payouts. Wessex Council paid out over £45,000 for one individual who fell down a work trench and broke his leg. In other broken limb cases, one person slipped on a wet toilet floor breaking both their wrists and received £57,000 as way of compensation; in yet another fall, the victim received over £53,000 for breaking their arm and shoulder. Even though a Wessex spokesman stated that personal injury compensation claims were only paid after thorough investigation proving their negligence, the payouts by councils seem a little steep by comparison to private organisations. Do the councils have worse personal injury solicitors or are they seen as a soft touch? I think, somewhere, I must be missing the point.
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The Health and Safety Executive has chosen to prosecute two Leeds-based building firms after a personal injury at work where a 22 tonne excavator ran over an employee, personal injury claim experts reported recently.
The unnamed worker, fifty eight years of age, had been an employee of Jack Lunn (Construction) Limited, of Pudsey, at the time of the incident. He had been at a Tinshill, West Yorkshire construction site where he was erecting temporary fencing when an excavator collided with him, running over his legs after knocking him to the ground, personal injury compensation experts say.
The unfortunate construction worker sustained massive injuries to both of his legs, including major tissue damage and broken bones, necessitating several surgical procedures in an attempt to repair the damage. Fastsource Ltd, the Hunslet-based building firm that was responsible for both the excavator’s presence at the work site and the employee that was manoeuvering it at the time of the incident, was fined a sum of £8,000 and told to pay court costs of £6,338 for their role in the man’s severe injuries, after the company admitted breaching health and safety regulations at a court hearing, and Jack Lunn (Construction) Ltd was fined an identical amount in court as well after the firm was also successfully prosecuted by the HSE.
Both Jack Lunn and Fastsource should have taken the simplest of precautions at the work site and simply segregated pedestrians from vehicles, one HSE inspector said after the court hearing. Doing so would have completely avoided the incident and spared the worker the pain and suffering he had to endure in the aftermath of his accident, the inspector added.
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The Health and Safety Executive has successfully prosecuted Durham County Council after one of its employees lost his entire arm in a horrific personal injury accident at work, feeding bush-trimmings into a wood chipper.
This particular hazard, in light of the very real danger of employees suffering tremendous, life-changing injuries, such as the 25 year-old in this instance, has been extremely well documented in the past. Despite an abundance of warnings regarding such an operation, it appears that the County Council overlooked them on this occasion.
The exact nature of the incident leading up to the young worker, who is said to be suffering both physically and mentally due to the loss of his arm, is still in question, only the resulting personal injury compensation claim is testament of the affect it has had on the employer’s life and livelihood. HSE investigations surmise that, whilst feeding trimmings into the mobile wood-chipping machine either the employee’s glove or his Hi-Vis vest got ensconced in the feed.
His arm was dragged into the chipper and, although his workmates endeavoured to eventually shut the machine down, they did not do so until the anonymous young man’s arm had been severed at the left shoulder.
Hospital staff did try to repair the torn limb after the patient was air-lifted out to the nearby James Cook Hospital, but to no avail and it was all they could do to treat the wound, which has left the victim struggling to lead an active daily life, since.
As well as guidelines issued for the risk involved for operatives of this type of machine, there are also instructions appertaining to the control measures for operating wood chippers such as this model. Durham County Council pleaded guilty to causing its employer the personal injury by breaching section 2(!) of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work act.
They were fined £13,000 and ordered also to find the costs of over £8,000, which ran from August 2009 when the incident took place to the present day.
Personal Injury Claims News
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After a car accident left a Hampshire man with severe brain injuries, he has gone on to make a personal injury compensation claim understood to be worth at least seven figures, experts say.
Marc Dallaway, twenty four years of age, of Farnborough, had been traveling in a vehicle heading towards the A323 by way of Aldershot Road in Fleet when his friend lost control of the vehicle. The car collided with another vehicle that had been traveling in the opposite direction, and in the crash Mr Dallaway sustained multiple fractures and a life-changing brain injury when the car he was in overturned, accident claims experts familiar with the incident reported.
The injured young man launched a compensation claim against the vehicle’s driver thanks to the aid of his grandfather and mother, claiming that the collision was caused by the driver’s negligence. The motorist’s insurers have admitted liability for Mr Dallaway’s injuries, with his compensation package recently being approved by the Royal Courts of Justice.
The injured young man has already received an interim payment in order to allow him to purchase a home that has been specially modified to accommodate his special care needs. However, the total compensation package will take into account his ongoing needs through annual payments that will continue for the rest of Mr Dallaway’s life.
The exact figure that the injured man will be entitled to due to his injuries has not been made public to the press at this time. However, industry experts agree that Mr Dallaway’s injuries are so extensive and life-changing that the total value of his compensation package could easily be in the millions of pounds.
News Personal Injury Compensation Claim
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The Magistrate’s Court at Leicester may have been forgiven for thinking that they had been taken back in time to the birth of the industrial revolution when they heard the details of the working conditions surrounding the latest personal injury compensation claim to be presented to them.
This particular accident at work case finally made it to court almost two years on from the day it happened at Schlegel Automotive Europe on the fourth of March, 2010. The details are somewhat gory; if you are tickle-stomached, stop reading now.
A forty-six year factory worker, who wishes to retain his anonymity, had identified a blockage around a heated injection nozzle on the twenty ton injection moulding machine on which he was stationed, an occurrence that the subsequent Health and Safety Executive investigation found needed to be addressed several times per shift. Upon attempting to clear the blockage with his left hand, the ill-maintained guard failed, blasting the nozzle through the worker’s hand, leading to this horrific personal injury.
The investigation also found enough evidence to suggest that the safety mechanism may have been in a state of ill repair for a number of years and, although the clearing of scrap rubber from the injection moulding process was a regular, every day activity, there were no clear guidelines outlined for employees to carry out this task safely in the event that a guard was damaged. Other machines on the premises were also identified as personal injury claims “waiting to happen”, by HSE inspector Dr Richenda Dixon.
For the unfortunate victim, the extent of the damage was so irreparable that hospital staff were unable to save his fingers, leaving him with only the thumb on his left hand. As the factory worker is predominantly left-handed, he is now unable to carry out even the most mundane of duties and has been off work for seventeen months, directly as a result of this accident at work.
The HSE ruled that if the guards had been maintained to the minimal acceptable standard, this “dreadful, debilitating” personal injury would simply not have happened. What adds insult to injury in this instance is that the firm had devised a process whereby the guards had procedures to check that they were in working order, but that practice had ‘fallen by the wayside’ in recent times. Subsequently, the firm were fined £9,000 for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act and ordered to pay costs in excess of £6,500.
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One major UK insurer recently reported its annual profits have increased by more than double, even in the face of rising personal injury claims costs and an increase in fraud attempts.
LV=, the fourth largest car insurance provider in the UK, reported £72.1 million in trading profits, with premium income growing to £1.46 billion, an increase of 23 per cent. The circumstances surrounding the results were challenging, with the company’s general investment portfolio dropping from 2010′s 5.7 per cent overall generated return to just 2.8 per cent in 2011 as a result of costly personal injury compensation cases brought against it.
Luckily for the firm, car accident volume was down as a result of high petrol prices prompting motorists to drive in a more careful manner, even as attempted fraud and claims instances increased. LV=’s general insurance managing director, John O’Rourke, commented on the issue, remarking that two out of every claims made just a decade ago would have been for personal injuries, but this figure has since increased to four out of every ten – something that Mr O’Rourke chalked up to a simple case of ‘opportunism.’
The firm, which boasts a customer base of more than 5 million Brits and has nearly 3 million insurance policies, claims fraud activity within the industry generates around £2 billion in costs, which equates to approximately 15 per cent of its total written premiums. This includes costs that arise from legal costs generated by fraudulent claims.
The industry finds it difficult to disprove false claims, Mr O’Rourke said, which leads to the massive costs. Despite that, he said the latest figures from LV= indicate results that were quite strong for a year that had its own extraordinary challenges.
News Personal Injury Claims
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According to personal injury claims specialists, the legal aid bill being enacted into law could result in making medical negligence claims harder for many people who suffer from injuries.
The bill, which will insitute the use of no win no fee arrangements, could leave many claimants without recourse to affordable legal representation, critics from the legal profession say. The bill is being pushed through by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke in an effort to reduce legal aid costs, which currently stand at more than £2 billion on an annual basis, and the NHS has reported that there has been a growing trend in the number of cases being brought against it, further inflating legal costs as well.
The bill is ‘doubly bad,’ according to Peter Walsh, the chief executive officer for Action Against Medical Accidents, in a recent newspaper interview with the Guardian. The charity’s chief executive spoke out against the measure, stating that the impact it would have on cases involving medical negligence will not only result in more people being denied access to justice but more costs generated by those who are able to pursue claims after all.
This is because that the new system may actually create greater burdens for the NHS, even as it will purportedly save the Government around £10 million on cases related to medical negligence. Under the new system that the legal aid bill is advocating, the NHS will have no choice but to cover more expensive legal costs in the event that they lose a case, experts say.
News Personal Injury Claims
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The last laugh is on one Birmingham joker who, in order to claim cheaper car insurance, falsely entered his career on a car insurance premium as he believed the more mundane career would attract a smaller quote. The incident only came to light when his ‘whiplash’ personal injury compensation claim was questioned in court.
The admission came after a beady eye caught the difference in the claimant’s statement to the evidence he was giving on the stand. It when he was questioned why he’d given his trade as ‘entertainer’ in court but had claimed to be an engineer in his first statement, he gave the dubious answer. That set the scene for the entire hearing and eventually the judge threw the personal injury claim out of court.
The incident that led up to the trial had, in itself, taken a long time to surface. Mr Jackson, he of supposed whiplash injury, had been rear-ended on the Pershaw Road in Birmingham in the summer of 2010. However, Mr James Rea, defending, had only been pulling his car forward, not driving at full pelt, when the car accident occurred. As a result, Mr Jackson claimed he had suffered with the personal injury for many months thereafter.
James Rea had taken his insurance out with Esure, who appointed Horwich Farrelly to defend both their interest and that of the defendant. It didn’t take them long to find the flaws in Jackson’s case, which ended up in the judge voiding the case and ruling that Jackson would be liable for the costs, some £24,000 worth.
Esure’s CEO, Stuart Vann, was obviously delighted that the result had gone in their and Mr Rea’s favour, when there was found to be no personal injury claim to answer to. But more than the fact that they were left with nothing to pay out, it was the morality behind the judge’s decision that pleased Vann most.
In a statement after the event, he explained that Esure would fight tooth and nail to win spurious cases as part of the company structure, and to rid the country of the ‘compensation culture’ that has swept the nation as no win no fee solicitors try to encourage citizens who would not have thought to make a personal injury claim if the solicitors hadn’t contacted them or had not suggested they may have a case.
Head of fraud at Horwich Farrelly discreetly tipped a wink to the authorities, openly suggesting that it was his belief that judges were now very much aware that a percentage of personal injury compensation claims that come to court will have no grounds whatsoever and are favouring the insurance companies when there are serious doubts about the legitimacy of such personal injury claims when they make it as far as the court room.
It is hoped by all that news of the claimant being slapped with the bill for the costs will go some way to deter other would-be claimants from ever accepting a personal injury solicitor’s offer when there is no real evidence to suggest that they have been injured in any way.
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An accident at work has led to the Health and Safety Executive’s prosecution of the injured worker’s employer, a building company based in Carmarthenshire.
The worker, whose name has been withheld from the press due to privacy concerns, was an employee of W A Bowler Ltd, a construction firm, and had been working at a care home located in Swansea, where he had been installing a beam and block floor with the aid of a colleague, according to personal injury claim experts familiar with the incident.
At a hearing at Swansea Crown Court, it was told that both workers had been hoisting a concrete beam weighing 174 kilograms into position manually through the use of lifting straps. However, one of the workers let go, sending the five metre long concrete beam swinging down to strike the second worker in the groin and sending him flying through the air, leaving him with massive injuries including nerve damage in his left leg leading to paralysis and a fractured pelvis from the impact of the concrete beam.
The HSE investigated the incident, discovering that the construction firm had contributed to the man’s injuries by failing to provide equipment that would be satisfactory for the job. This led to the two workers having to manually lift the concrete beam in a dangerous manner, HSE investigators reported.
The Llanelli, Carmarthenshire-based firm admitted to breaching health and safety regulations at the Swansea Crown Court hearing, leading W A Bowler Limited to be fined a sum of £3,000. The worker injured in the incident may decide to bring a personal injury compensation claim against his employer for damages as well, sources say.
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A man who suffered severe injuries to his arm in a nasty accident at work has received a £15,000 personal injury compensation payout thanks to a ruling by Bournemouth Crown Court.
Aden Pro Form were brought to the docks by the Health and Safety Executive following investigations into the incident, which happened three years ago in 2009 on their factory premises in Westminster Road, Wareham, Dorset.
The HSE inspector giving evidence at the hearing, Mr David Bell, inferred that the company could have gone to greater lengths to prevent this accident at work from ever taking place. David James, the unfortunate victim (not the Bristol City goalkeeper – as far as we know, he did not injure his arm three years ago…although Bristol City fans may say differently) was left with extreme suffering following the incident, which meant that he was unable to return to work at the Wareham factory.
The accident that qualified Mr James for his personal injury compensation occurred whilst he and a colleague were working jointly on a machine into which they fed sheet metal to produce an order for flashing components for the roofs of industrial buildings.
The hearing at the south coast Crown Court were informed that it had been some seven or eight years since they had had training on the machine. ISO regulations, irrespective of how much information the company have on writing their own, will call for much more regular refresher courses on heavy, skilled or dangerous plant, such as the machine that Mr James and his colleague were working on.
Very often, the job itself or the machinery may not change for decades. Where the issue lies is in the laws governing the way in which people use those machines and safety records indicate that they retain a level of competence to continue doing the job without endangering themselves, whereby exposing the company to the threat of personal injury claims, as has happened in this instance, here.
Mr Bell, for the HSE, identified the machine that Mr James was working on as ‘potentially dangerous’ and proffered that this was one accident at work that may have been entirely preventable. If the company had insisted upon making doubly sure that all staff were operating within safety guidelines, they may not now be facing the personal injury compensation claim payout of £15,000 plus the additional £17k+ in costs that they will also have to find, associated with the case.
Personal Injury Claims News
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After an accident at work saw one man seriously burned when he hit an electric cable, the Health and Safety Executive has prosecuted the man’s employer, an Oxfordshire engineering company, for the role it played in the worker’s accident.
According to personal injury claim experts, the sixty three year old man injured in the accident, whose name has not been made public due to privacy concerns, had been working on the Crossrail railway project, the multi-billion pound endeavour to link Abbey Wood, Shenfield, and Maidenhead via central London.
The man, an employee of Fugro Engineering Services Ltd, had been in Hanover Street, London, creating an inspection pit, when he struck a high voltage cable with the hydraulic breaker he had been using, the Central Criminal Court was recently told. The man sustained severe, life threatening burns in the incident across 60 per cent of his body, according to the man’s accident solicitor.
The HSE’s investigation discovered that the engineering firm’s employees had not been given enough training in routines for safe digging. While the site had been subject to scans with a cable detection tool in order to avoid accidents, the location of any buried cables had not been marked on the road, the HSE also found.
The Wallingford, Oxfordshire-based firm admitted to breaching Health and Safety regulations following the HSE’s successful prosecution. As a result, Fugro Engineering Services Ltd was ordered to pay a fine of £55,000 and was also made responsible for £30,000 in legal fees as well.
The injured worker is expected to recover, and may be making a claim for compensation against his employer.
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Speaking after the announcement that insurance giant LV= doubled its profits despite significant rises in payouts for personal injury claims and fraud, general insurance MD John O’Rourke spoke of his disappointment that the fact this achievement was not even greater was down to purely to personal injury claims, some genuine some fraudulent.
This sentiment is all the more poignant given that the general perception is that drivers are driving more carefully on two counts. In order to conserve fuel, that hit £1.50/litre in Coventry yesterday, drivers are being more cautious. And secondly, with car insurance premiums rising to compensate for the culture that sees victims ‘ambulance chasing’, drivers are doing everything they can to protect their sacred no claims bonus discounts as a way of keeping cover as low as possible.
O’Rourke believes that ten years hence, out of every ten car accidents two would result in a personal injury compensation claims. In the current climate, that figure has now doubled to forty percent of ‘victims’ making successful personal injury claims. It is difficult to see where the justification in the number of successful cases lies, once you see the rise in compensation claims versus the safer driving. And it is not just the insurance sector stating that. In their ongoing study of European roads, EuroRAP accredited the UK with the best risk-assessed roads on the continent, so where are these injuries coming from, with safer cars, safest roads and safer driving? O’Rourke describes it succinctly in two words: simple opportunism. With nothing to lose on a no win, no fee basis, there really is nothing stopping a victim of any accident pursuing a personal injury compensation claim.
Furthermore, he recognises the challenge facing the insurance industry, and that’s to weed out the claims that are spurious and wants to see the defending insurers have more power to challenge personal injury claims solicitors fighting for dubious cases. Against the backdrop of legal fees amounting to £1,666 per minute to settle personal injury claims in the UK, LV=’s £72M+ trading profit return for the year were extremely welcomed.
With the mission to drive profits through cutting back on fraudulent claims, LV=, the fourth largest car insurer in the country, are well placed to get the best insights in the industry to accomplish this. This will be no mean feat, though. With £2bn of fraud, factoring in thousands of whiplash claims to get to that figure, that’s a lot of weeds to pick out of the garden.
News Personal Injury Claims
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One West Midlands girl who was paralysed after a car accident recently won a personal injury compensation claim settlement worth millions of pounds, industry experts recently reported.
Six year old Cerys Edwards won her personal injury claim in the High Court in Birmingham, reaching a settlement of £5 million for the injuries she sustained in 2006 when her parents’ car was struck by a speeding driver. In addition to the lump sum payment, Cerys, who sustained brain damage in the crash, will also be given annual index-linked payments of £450,000 to pay for her lifetime care needs.
Cerys’ parents launched a compensation claim after their child was left without the ability to breathe without a respirator thanks to the collision, which also prompted them to campaign to increase the maximum sentence for maximum driving. The driver of the Range Rover that collided with their car, Antonio Boparian, had been travelling in excess of 70 mph in a 30 mph zone, yet the millionaire’s son, who was given a jail sentence of 21 months, served only six of those months.
In the wake of the recent settlement, a member of the family’s legal team said that while the damage done to Cerys cannot be put right by any amount of money, her parents can now rest easy that the future of their daughter is secure, as any parent of a disabled child’s greatest fear is for the care needs of their son or daughter.
Cerys’ campaign to reform the law has been widely successful, with their efforts leading to a bill making its way through Parliament currently that would see an increase of five years to a sentence for dangerous driving.
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The legal fees from personal injury claims made for road traffic accidents cost motorists £2.4 million every day, according to the insurance industry.
Car accident related legal claims add around £1,666 every minute to the cost of insurance in the UK, the Association of British Insurers said. Legal fees in these claims often exceed the compensation paid out to those injured in accidents, said the ABI, relating how the legal costs of of one insurer were 142 per cent higher than the amount it actually paid out in personal injury compensation to successful claimants in 2010.
The insurance industry body’s insurance head, James Dalton, said that fixed legal costs are simply too high within the civil compensation sector, even as the lower-value claim fast track process, which was introduced in 2010, has led to a significant reduction in delays for claimants receiving their compensation. The entire industry is held in the grip of legal costs that are both ‘disproportionate and excessive,’ Mr Dalton also said, with these fees exceeding damages awards quite often, leading to higher insurance premiums for drivers, while the NHS and local authorities have to also shoulder a heavy cost burden as well for public liability or medical negligence claims.
The insurance head called on the government to press forward with reforms to the civil compensation system in the UK. Doing so will enable a reduction of solicitor fees to a more realistic level, added Mr Dalton, as will banning the practice of selling on names and phone numbers of insurance customers who were involved in accidents to claims management companies and law firms.
News Personal Injury Claims
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It is one of the worst maritime disasters this millennium so far and the most horrific in a generation. And the sad tale of the Costa Concordia unfolds even further this week as many more bodies were found by salvage crew working on the crippled ship as the pieces come together to bring this sad chapter of Carnival Cruise’s history to a close. For the survivors and relatives of those who perished, however, the personal injury claims are only just about to begin.
Up until the ship went sailing too close to the island and ran aground, the company had been involved in only a very few personal injury claims despite the millions who’ve travelled the oceans’ waves on board a veritable flotilla of luxurious floating cities. One of Carnival’s subsidiary organisations had to outrun pirates off the African coast and there have been the odd one or two fires on board, but that has been the extent of incident, to date.
Other than that, the legal team of five have only ever had to call upon the services of outside personal injury claims solicitors on an ad hoc basis. But with the death toll now standing at 32 and 4,200 people in total, over 1,000 of whom were crew members from 61 different countries, the personal injury claims will be coming in thick and fast.
Arnaldo Perez, Carnival’s now head of counsel, joined the firm 19 years ago and is being given legal advice from all manner of peers in the maritime attorney industry. One such colleague, Jonathon Aronson, has surmised (in Perez’s silence) that the head of counsel will now be going over all of the internal insurance policies, double-checking that everything has been paid and they have certificates to prove it. There will be complications ahead, given the intricate nature of maritime personal injury compensation claims.
Aronson expects that other insurance companies on behalf of the affected passengers and crew will already have been in touch and it is in Perez’s interests to get any litigation out of the way and suggests that he “wants to settle as many personal injury claims as fast as [he] can” in as short a time as possible so that the true cost can be evaluated, which some corners estimate may run to $1bn.
That figure is exclusive of the foreseen complications that the removal of almost two and a half thousand tons of heavy fuel could lead to in a delicately-balanced marine eco-system where the wreckage of the $490M ship lies.
The issues of the deaths and the prosecution of the ship’s captain will be dealt with separately under different laws than the personal injury claims.
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A personal injury compensation claim made by one Hertfordshire girl could see her being awarded more than £7 million for the brain injuries she sustained shortly after her birth, experts say.
Letchworth Garden City native, Danielle Marshal, had been prematurely born in Stevenage’s Lister Hospital twelve years ago, and had been receiving specialised care in the Special Care Baby Unit of the hospital when a collapsed lung caused her to develop brain damage. As a result of her injuries shortly after her premature birth, Danielle now suffers from cerebral palsy, which has left her without the ability to walk, sit, or stand unassisted.
Danielle’s family has since decided to launch a medical negligence claim against the NHS Trust overseeing the hospital, claiming that staff had failed to respond to the child’s condition in a swift enough manner. The direct result of this negligence, according to the family’s injury solicitors, is that Danielle sustained the devastating brain injury that led to her cerebral palsy diagnosis.
Now, the NHS Trust for the hospital has admitted its liability for the incident following on the heels of a Royal Courts of Justice hearing. A compensation package in the millions of pounds was recently approved, which will see Danielle receiving a £2.82 million lump sum payment, followed by index-linked yearly payments for as long as she lives in order to provide both her and the family the funding needed to provide for her long-term care needs.
One NHS Trust spokesperson made an apology for the inadequate standard of care the 12 year old girl received at the hands of hospital staff, adding that hospital procedures had been reviewed in the wake of the costly lesson.
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Many of the cases fought and won by personal injury claims solicitors are entirely preventable accidents at work. For larger enterprises, it makes sense to have a dedicated health and safety team, or at least a manager, even if it means incorporating the role into their daily duties.
In order to prevent incidents that could lead to personal injury claims those responsible will carry out risk assessments, either of their own design or from a template that a specialist risk assessment firm can provide, tailored to the company profile.
The measures imposed by the Health and Safety at Work act do not only mean that a business is responsible for its employees, but also anyone affected by an employee acting on their behalf. This includes indirect employees such as sub-contractors as well as part- or full-time direct personnel.
Problems tend to start to arise with the administration and monitoring of those situations that could lead to personal injury at work when an organisation gets to that in-between size; certainly, the legislation of the act goes up a notch once an organisation reaches five or more employees. So how does a small firm, though acknowledging the liability that they have personal and public cover for, justify valuable man hours and extra skills and specific knowledge to devote to protecting themselves from personal injury claims?
It is a big undertaking. When you set up in business as a sole trader, many of us have enough on our plate coping with ensuring we’ve got a constant stream of work, keeping our skill up to date and filling shoe-boxes with receipts that we inevitably never sort out in time for the tax return (doh!). At the outset, the thought of employing staff and ensuring their health and safety at work is little short of a pipedream, let alone an aspect you have time to devote valuable hours to.
The good news is, there are organisations that specialise in solely this aspect of business and, for a fee, draw from their knowledge base and bespoke templates to provide the small business – or any-sized business that wishes to sub-contract this critical aspect – everything it needs to cover itself against placing its employees in danger, therefore negating the chances of personal injury claims against them.
As well as an initial assessment, they can schedule visits to ensure all guidelines are being adhered to, provide training in such aspects as manual handling, dealing with hazardous substances (COSHH), even assess whether everyone who is using a PC monitor (DSE) is doing so in such a way that it will not lead to any short- or long-term illness as a result of improper posture (this probably will differ from employee to employee).
If you’re not sure that your business is 100% personal injury claim-proof, on the inside at least, take a moment of your time to find a risk assessment management business who can tick all of your boxes, not leave them in the gangway for a member of staff to trip you up over.
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One Nottingham native’s medical negligence claim has left her with a six figure personal injury compensation award after it was determined that the botched surgical procedure she had as an infant led to her cerebral palsy diagnosis, experts say.
Twenty four year old Stacey Jayne Smith had been admitted to the Nottingham City Hospital as a baby due to running a high temperature and suffering from poor feeding in the wake of the congenital condition that accompanied her birth, personal injury claim solicitor experts reporting for the BBC said. The hospital’s medical staff had suspicions that the young girl was suffering from gallstones, making the recommendation that her gall bladder be removed to remedy the situation.
However, over the course of the surgical procedure, Stacey went into cardiac arrest following the puncturing of her bowel. While hospital staff were able to resuscitate the infant girl, she suffered brain damage during the incident, leaving her with cerebral palsy.
Stacey’s family launched a medical negligence claim against the hospital, which admitted a liability level of seventy per cent for the girl’s injuries. This led to the twenty four year old to receive compensation from London’s High Court, and while the precise sum has not been made public, it is understood to be around six figures in value.
In the wake of the court hearing, a member of Stacey’s legal team remarked that the case had been settled recently only because her family had not known that their claim against the NHS was a valid one until recently.
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Just when you thought it was safe to walk out the front door, Sunday morning we were greeted by a glistening carpet of pure white snow to remind us the UK winter can strike when we least expect it.
Personal injury claims solicitors on the other hand will have been primed, as such conditions often bring in a wave of new cases when we are caught unprepared, details in one recent report suggest.
One of the major contributory factors, other than whiplash, to compensation claims is falling or slipping on snow, sludge and ice. As such, insurance companies, fearing the worst, are issuing their own variation of the Met Office weather warning, reminding everyone, not just those most vulnerable to slips and bumps in the snow, to tread carefully if they have to venture outdoors as we’re subjected to a few days of chill before things pick up to almost summery climes at the end of the week.
AA Home Emergency Response have been quick off the mark, as they have a keen insight into just how many insurance claims they see go through their books that have the possibly to transcend into personal injury claims. Tom Stringer, of the Automobile Association’s homecare insurance arm, has reminded us of the recent colder winters we’ve experienced and that business owners as well as householders may have taken their eye of the ball due to the milder winter we’ve experienced this term, so far.
The frustration for companies such as Mr. Stringer’s, is that many personal injury claims are entirely preventable and the number of cases start to snowball whenever we’re hit by snaps of Siberian weather as we have been recently. Simple measures such as laying rock salt or posting warning signs are enough to stave off many cases that result in personal injury compensation claims.
They are urging both business and homeowners to carry out risk assessments, especially on driveways where many compensation claims start, and take necessary precautions. Winning a personal injury claim case is all well and good, but the long-term effects of broken limbs and head injuries sustained during such a fall could far outweigh any compensation a successful claimant may receive in a personal injury award.
Health and Safety is key at any time of the year and applies to both staff and members of the public who come into contact with your business. Liability insurance is a must to ensure your business is not affected by any spurious or genuine compensation claims – make sure you limit the claims to keep the premiums down and live up to your duty of care to employees and the public at large, alike.
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The insurance industry has recently pledged to pass on the savings it will make to policy holders after personal injury legal fee cuts are made, according to official comments from Downing Street.
David Cameron called a summit at Downing Street last week with leading insurance providers, where the prime minister had harsh criticisms for the so-called ‘compensaiton culture’ gripping the UK. Mr Cameron made a pledge to reduce the £1,200 in fees that personal injury lawyers currently collect on small-scale claims in an effort to minimise the impact personal injury compensation cases have on the insurance industry.
Representatives for the insurance industry in attendance at the summit made commitments to making sure that any savings made by eliminating the fees were passed on to the public in the form of reduced premium pricing. The insurers also pledged to not blindly pay out on as many health and safety claims but instead challenge more of them instead, while additionally indicating that it would provide employers with guidelines detailing what was needed in order to comply with regulations in order to help small and medium-sized businesses, as firms have been raising concerns that they have no choice but to go far beyond the legal minimum in order to secure requisite levels of cover.
The summit at Downing Street comes on the heels of growing levels of concern regarding the 1,500 claims made for whiplash every day for even the least serious accidents, with the results being that the average insurance bill experiences an increase of £90 every year.
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Prime Minister David Cameron came together with the insurance industry this week in an effort to tackle whiplash claims and other issues that are leading to rampant increases to British drivers’ car insurance premiums.
One of the many ways discussed to get a handle on the increased personal injury claims volume was to adjust motor premiums accordingly after reducing or eliminating the £1,200 in fees that personal injury solicitors can collect from small-scale and small value claims. Another method, which is yet to be discussed in depth, is to institute a threshold of 6.25 mph for whiplash claims, with collisions occurring under this rate of speed to be categorically thrown out.
Many industry experts feel that such a decision would be a ‘completely fair’ one, said Andrew Cope, a consultant working at the accident and emergency ward of Peterbrough City Hospital. Mr Cope sees around 10 cases of collision-related whiplash injuries every month, with the injuries centered around strain and stretching experienced by the spine’s soft tissue after a patient’s body is thrown forward in a forceful, sudden jerk, leading to stiffness in the back of the head and the neck and causing headaches in the victim.
Normal x-rays will not show any evidence of a whiplash injury, said Mr Cope, though the lion’s share of whiplash sufferers will see their symptoms dissipate in anywhere from four to six weeks – though much longer-lasting symptoms of one or two years have occurred.
Those who suffer genuine whiplash-related injuries can face disruptions to normal everyday actions, may experience difficulties at work, and have been known to suffer disturbed sleep cycles as well, Mr Cope explained. However, many claims management firms may encourage people to make whiplash claims even though their pain and suffering may be only minor – or even nonexistent.
The consultant said that he has seen many cases where the actions of claimants are inconsistent with the symptoms of whiplash, such as waiting two days before going to be seen and instead going to work in a field that requires physical exertion. Someone who suffers from whiplash would most likely not be able to carry out such actions, said Mr Cope, as whiplash is usually quite debilitating.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Zebedeerox
Claims that BT are to enter the personal injury claims market direct have been greatly exaggerated, according to one recent report. It is apparent that BT Claims applied to change the shape of its business, but it is not to act as a solicitor to those who wish to make a personal injury compensation claim directly, other than from the 6,500 cases it deals with as a result of incidents with its own huge fleet of commercial vehicles.
The confusion has arisen because of the size of this claims arm of the fleet management department. In all, according to one recent report, BT has a massive 35,000 fleet vehicles on the road at any given time. To pass the handling of claims against a fleet that size over to the responsibility of a third party would cost tens of thousands on an annual basis in administration alone, without even considering running the risk that not having hands-on control of those claims would invite. Hence, they look after their liable 4,000 personal injury claims and at-fault insurance claims themselves, plus the 2,500 annual claims for incidents in which their drivers are not at fault.
What BT Claims hope to achieve by becoming an alternative business is imparting the knowledge they have gained from dealing with such volumes of claims to other agents in the same field. Dealing with liability issues over £5M and retrieval of £2.5M worth of claims where their drivers are blameless gives them a massive insight into the personal injury and ‘at-fault’ claims markets, more than the majority of personal injury claims solicitors firms whose sole purpose is to fight the cause of those injured as a result of accidents or negligence.
However, the claims arm of the telecoms giants is under no impression that it has become the be-all and end-all of the industry sector. By sharing these experiences with brokers and insurers with whom they share the market, they remaining optimistic that it will be a two-way learning curve and can improve their practises and customer service aspects to ensure any personal injury compensation claim is dealt with promptly and with maximum efficiency.
Details in one recent report suggest that BT Claims has already submitted the necessary detail to undertake this restructuration and it is envisaged that twenty staff will be seconded once the ball has started rolling. You have to say, this move is a good call on their part.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
In a recent meeting with business and consumer groups and the insurance industry, the Prime Minister has committed to reducing the legal costs generated by out of control personal injury claims encouraged by ‘ambulance chasing’ personal injury solicitor firms in an effort to manage the rampant increases in insurance premiums.
David Cameron gave his assurances that the Government would be taking steps to cut health and safety red tape, reduce legal costs, and tackle the personal injury compensation culture that has the insurance industry in a stranglehold at the recent summit, while insurers have put forward their commitment to pass along any savings made to their customers in the form of reduced premium pricing.
In an effort to make progress towards these goals in the future, both the insurance industry and the Government agreed to band together to accomplish these goals. Many measures were discussed during the summit, with insurers meeting Government reforms halfway on nearly every point.
An example of one of these co-operative agreements is the commitment by the Government to reduce the amount legal professionals can earn from legal claims of small value, as the fee currently stands at £1,200. In exchange, insurers will pass on any savings made from paying reduced legal fees to their customers.
The insurance also committed to adjusting premiums in reflection of any legal cost reductions that result from Lord Justice Jackson’s legal reforms banning referral fees and reforming the conditional fee arrangements, or ‘no win no fee‘ arrangements.
Other ways the Government has worked to reduce out of control motor insurance premiums is by cracking down on uninsured drivers, as the premium price of honest drivers increases by £30 each in order to cover the costs of accidents caused by these irresponsible motorists.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
We cannot open a newspaper at the minute without headlines of some member of the public winning a huge medical negligence case or the government trying to find ways to ban referral fees and the amount that personal injury claims solicitors can earn from smaller claims.
We all have an idea what personal injury claims are for and how grand some of the compensation payouts have been. But do we know how an accident at work is investigated if a case is not so cut and dried? Or how is evidence gathered in a medical negligence compensation claim if the obvious is not glaring out from the diagnosed facts?
Whichever side has the dispute in question, it will almost always be one insurance company or the other that will endeavour to uncover the facts that will either hold up or refute a personal injury claim in court. In the event of a medical claim for insurance where are pre-existing condition clause is written into the contract, whether it is an underwriter or chief medical officer working under their employ, it will be the insurance firm or broker who instigate the research to determine whether that claim is affected by a history that appears in a patient’s medical records.
They are almost always discovered as, at the start of a case, the claimant will be asked to sign over the right to the insurance firm to request and digest their medical records, in whole or up to the point where the claimant’s cover began with the insurance company.
A claimant’s history of making personal injury claims or even property damage will be available to any solicitor in the central indexing bureau. The fact that a claimant may have a whole host of documented prior insurance claims will not prevent them making a new one, but anyone presiding over a decision on the case may take this history into account.
If the claimant is making a case against one body or another and there is any suspicion about the basis or symptoms of the personal injury claim, it is not unusual for the insurance investigator to deploy video surveillance. One famous case in the Midlands last year saw a couple tending their allotment on several occasions, although both were continuing to claim compensation in one guise or another.
If the above methods are not fruitful, insurers have other weapons in their armoury. They are not averse, for instance, to collecting witness statements to corroborate events their client or claimant is trying to prove. In the case of car accidents, where fault is in question, metallurgic means are used to test whether one paint job matches another to uphold a claim for damages.
So when you see an amount paid out in a personal injury compensation claim, just think about the work that may have gone into substantiating that claim before dismissing the merit of the award.
News Personal Injury Claim Solicitor
by Personal Injury Claims
David Cameron recently attended a Downing Street summit in order to meet with insurers to find ways to control whiplash-related claims for personal injury compensation, as industry experts say that these claims are adding an average of £90 to the cost of motor insurance for every British driver.
The prime minister wants the so-called ‘compensation culture’ in the UK, which has made it into the whiplash capital of Europe, to be dismantled in order to drive down legal costs. Motorists are encouraged by lawyers to submit personal injury claims for injuries that can be positively trivial, only to earn massive payouts for both them and their legal teams – and the country’s insurance firms are left to absorb these costs to an annual tune of £2 billion, and adding insult to injury is the fact that while the last three years have seen the national accident rate decline by a figure of 16 per cent, the number of whiplash claims have increased by one third.
Mr Cameron’s plan calls for new measures to protect firms being sued for excessive or trivial claims in exchange for these companies to reduce motor premium costs. Other options on the table include increasing the whiplash claim threshold in order to weed out spurious claims, and could involve introducing tighter criteria for medical evidence indicating whiplash-related injuries and also the institution of a minimum driving speed for a whiplash claim to be valid.
The summit included many industry representatives, such as insurance providers Zurich, RBSI, CFS, Admiral, Aviva, and Axa. Representatives from the Association of British Insurers, the industry body for the insurance sector at large, were also in attendance.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
It seems that personal injury claims solicitors are in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons again, this time for almost bribing victims – or anyone who can refer someone they know with a valid compensation claim – with gifts if they stake their personal injury claims with them.
However, details in one recent report suggest that it’s horses for courses and, depending upon the nature (see: nett worth) of your personal injury compensation claim, the award expected for a winning case will determine the prize on offer, as some firms involved in this practise are offering the tablet to victims of car-crash accidents. However, with more than one firm involved in this practise, there are variations on the theme.
As well as iPad 2 tablets being offered you can claim £400 of Debenhams or Boots vouchers by filling in personal injury claim form online at one the websites, where the offers are being touted. One personal injury claims solicitors firm is said to be offering the reward to referrers of victims and on a no win, no fee basis – two real hot potatoes at the minute in Parliament, with many people acknowledging the fact that something has to be done about referral fees, but no one actually coming up with a definitive plan.
And if you don’t fancy an iPad 2, you can always exchange that gift for a cool grand in advance, on the understanding that £1,000 will be deducted from your winning personal injury claim. Although one firm, who were tested over the phone by a reporter claiming to have had an accident at work stated that, as soon as his place of work accepted liability for the personal injury at work due to their negligence, the iPad would be dispatched and its value would not be deducted from the final compensation payout.
There are many people getting their knickers in a twist about these actions, especially the referral reward. But as the Solicitors Regulation Authority have pointed out, anyone under their jurisdiction in England and Wales acting in this manner are not actually doing anything illegal. Morally these enticements are at best, dubious, but as far as the letter of the law goes, they are not breaking any.
This isn’t helped by the fact that James Rooney, acting as spokesman for one of the firms caught up in this argument, Paul Rooney Partnership, has denied that the rewards are enticing people who would otherwise not consider making a claim but are ‘thank yous‘ for those that do.
In the case of Hampson Hughes, who were subjected to the investigative reporter’s actions, their spokesperson Alesha Ward defended their corner by stating that the Apple tablets were only released upon a claim being successful, hence on the back of a genuine claim.
News Personal Injury Claim Solicitor
by Personal Injury Claims
After the number of medical negligence claims made against the NHS increased by 9 per cent in 2011, it now faces a £15.7 billion personal injury compensation bill, sources say.
Equivalent to one seventh of the annual budget for the health service, the £15.7 billion cost has been signed over in order to pay for the future care of thousands and thousands of individuals suffering long-lasting and life-changing injuries at the hands of blundering hospital staff. In fact, medical negligence claims instances have increased by 9 per cent since last year, according to the Department of Health.
A significant part of the rapidly rising costs is being placed squarely on the shoulders of ‘no win no fee’ conditional fee arrangements struck by solicitors who may be encouraging injured patients to bring claims against the NHS. Around one pound out of every three paid out in medical negligence claims is estimated to end up in the pockets of the legal industry.
Patients Association chief executive, Katherine Murphy, commented on the issue, remarking that many patients say that they have no desire to take legal action against hospitals once medical negligence has occurred, but as the complaints system is insufficient for their needs, making patients feel that making claims is the only form of redress open to them. Ms Murphy called it ‘scandalous’ that so much cash is spent on compensation to existing patients, especially in context of the £20 billion in efficiency savings the NHS finds itself forced into, and called for a focus on using that cash to treat new patients by cutting negligent treatment.
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by Personal Injury Claims
The new £25,000 personal injury claims extension made by the Government to the fast track process was recently welcomed by the Association of British Insurers, with the ABI stating that the change means that an additional 55,000 road crash victims a year will receive personal injury compensation in a more timely manner.
The fast track process, which was previously subject to a £10,000 claims limit, was introduced in April of 2010 and provides fixed legal costs and standardised claims forms for the car accident sector, along with strict time limits for legal representatives and insurers in order to establish liability. With the cap now raised by £15,000, the ABI says that approximately 97 per cent of claimants can now avail themselves of the process.
Nick Starling, the general insurance director for the ABI, remarked that evidence has shown that this process has brought the cost of an average payout down by more than half in just two short years while also lowering legal costs as well. He praised the move on the Government’s part, adding that it should continue its efforts to reform the civil litigation sector in the UK in order to provide a more cost efficient personal injury compensation system as well as reducing fixed legal costs across all sectors in addition to car accident claims.
The Government seeks to build on this momentum, according to industry insiders, as reports have recently emerged that ministers wish to propose the introduction of an analogous fast-track scheme for public liability claims and personal injury claims for workplace-related injuries as well.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
Thanks to a request from a Mr. Stanley, the total amount paid out in compensation by North Yorkshire County Council for 2011 has been issued by the authority’s Insurance and Risk Management department. With the total a little over £150,000, the region can either claim to be a lot safer place to live than Staffordshire, or the latter have got much better personal injury claim solicitors available, as the total for the three main boroughs under their jurisdiction came to £2.2M – although that was for a three year period, that’s still almost five times the amount pro-rata for the year.
However, there was a theme between the two sets of statistics of personal injury claims, that being that trips, slips and falls account for a large percentage by volume in both cases.
Where there was a difference between the two recent reports is the level of information disclosed. We will highlight the incidents of compensation paid by the North Yorkshire CC shortly, where we have the information to do so. And that’s just the point.
All of the information published about the personal injury claims has been requested and dutifully released under the Freedom of Information Act (2000). The differences lie in the level of information released. As you will see momentarily, North Yorks CC literally only gave a resume of the incidents and the total number of occurrences, per incident. The reason they cited for disclosing only this scant level of information was that to expand any further is tantamount to breaching the Data Protection Act (1998). Fair enough.
But when similar information about personal injury compensation claims was released for Staffs County Councils, predominantly relating to payouts to civil servants and schools, specifics about the amounts won per case, age and sex of the victims and their relationships with the Councils were released alongside the figures.
So which set of information does the public legally have the rite to be availed of? Did Staffs CC breach confidentiality regulations or are North Yorks CC withholding information? There does seem disparity between the two reports, that’s for sure.
For your information, here is an overview of what the total of £151,262.00 in compensation payouts covered:
• Defective equipment accounted for personal injury to five employees
• Footpaths that were below par tripped and injured eleven members of the public
• Eleven separate incidents made up the balance of the compensation, which affected both employees and the public, which included defects resulting in injury for the following offenders: highways and potholes, systems of work, equipment and operational systems.
It would be interesting to know exactly whether either, or both, councils were within their rights to publish the amount of personal injury information that they did.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
After he severed tendons in his hand from punching a punch-ball machine in his local pub, a man from Newcastle has decided to seek personal injury compensation for the damage he sustained in the incident, sources say.
Former soldier David Forster, thirty two years of age, struck the arcade style machine with a brutal right hook, earning him an impressive nine hundred point score. However, the tendons he severed in his hand from doing so kept him from working for a period of six months, according to his personal injury claim.
In a recent interview with the Daily Mail newspaper, Mr Forster said that he split his fist open as soon as it made contact with the punch-ball, with the former member of the Coldstream Guard left in exquisite pain as blood spilled from his wound. Injury claims experts writing for the newspaper reported that the thirty two year old man was taken to Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where his damaged right hand needed twelve stitches and the insertion of a metal plate in order to repair the damage.
Mr Forster has since launched a personal injury compensation claim against the Utopian Leisure group, the owners of Sam Jack’s pub, and the pub itself. The injured man claims that he nearly lost his home after missing six months of work left him with the inability to pay his mortgage.
The pub’s legal representation claim that, as Mr Forster was in a state of drunkenness when he tried to strike the punch-ball, the inebriated former solder missed and struck the metal frame of the machine instead. However, according to CCTV footage of the incident, Mr Forster’s legal team have said that these claims are patently false.
News Personal Injury Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
Three years after the incident, Tata Steel have finally been charged under the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations after a gas explosion proved very nearly fatal in a routine repair operation in an accident at work that breached two of the guidelines set out in the legislation.
The incident happened at the massive Tata plant in Scunthorpe in February 2009 when a pair of co-workers were carrying out maintenance on a gas pipe that had sprung a leak. As one of the two workers attempted to affix a reparatory sheet of metal to the damaged pipe, pressurised gas shot through the hole, producing a jet of flame that could have swamped the workers, had they not been lucky.
The flames were fed by gas from the coke oven along a section of pipe that supplied the steel plant’s power station at the heart of the operation. As such, the pressure caused the flaming fountain of gas to escape the pipe by a clear ten feet (3m), causing the worker who was attempting to mend the pipe work with the fabricated metalwork to receive personal injuries amounting to minor facial burns. Given the nature of the explosion, the two workers who were carrying out the ill-advised repair were extremely fortunate to get off with the limited personal injuries that they did.
In a hearing at Scunthorpe Magistrate’s Court, Tata Steel UK Ltd. pleaded guilty to both charges brought against them which contravened the above act. The first charge related to the initial risk assessment applied to the planning and execution of the repair and the second charge was in connection to the risk associated with coke oven gas and the fact that Tata failed to eliminate the subsequent risk jeopardising its employer’s safety.
The personal injury compensation award and Tata fine totalled £30,000, whilst the steel giants were also ordered to pay £1,696 costs.
News Personal Injury Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
After one mother from County Durham suffered personal injury from an incident involving a horse stamping on her, the injured mum has decided to seek personal injury compensation from the owner of the animal, experts say.
Consett native Kara Goldsmith, thirty nine years of age, had been riding the horse at the time as part of her consideration of purchasing the animal. The nine year old gelding, named Red by his owner Bradley Patchcott, had began to buck and rear while Mrs Goldsmith went for her test ride, throwing the woman from the saddle and, according to her injury claims, stamping on her face as she lay upon the grass.
Mrs Goldsmith was rushed to the Sunderland Royal Hospital for treatment, as one of the blows from Red’s hooves split her face open The injured mother was in hospital for two weeks in order to suffer through more than 20 surgical facial reconstruction procedures, as one side of her face had been entirely shattered by the horse to the point where she had to learn to speak again.
Mrs Goldsmith launched legal action against Mr Patchcott for personal injury compensation last year on the grounds that the owner had not given her warning that Red could pose problems when it came time to control him during a ride. However, Newcastle County Court dismissed her case, with one judge ruling that anyone who rides a horse assumes a risk of injury.
The injured mother has since taken her case to London’s Appeal Court on the grounds that animal owners have a responsibility to make known the characteristics of a particular animal if they could pose a danger to others.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
Even the Association of British Insurers is now starting to acknowledge the depth of feeling from a nation that has seen enough of whiplash as the mounting costs of personal injury claims is no longer being borne by the insurance sector. Rather, the cost is being passed back down to the British driver with every new vehicle insurance policy that is being taken out.
The ABI have had a tough couple of years, with comparison websites driving profits down and the investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into whether the spiralling costs of auto insurance were justified. And it’s not really since the OFT’s research gave the British insurance sector a relatively clean bill of health that the extent of personal injury claims and their impact on the sector’s profitability have come to light, prompting action right across the industry, enlisting the biggest names in UK politics to be standard-bearers in the march to crackdown on spurious personal injury compensation claims, the majority of which have been laid firmly at the feet of the ‘whiplash injury’.
Now, in an assessment by a Commons transport select committee, there is a cry for renewed vigour in the fight against whiplash which, as well as earning the country the nickname of Bogus Britain is also now endowing our public with the unwanted tag of having the ‘weakest necks in Europe’.
As the personal injury of whiplash is so difficult to either prove or disprove, the committee are calling for the actual amount of compensation for whiplash to be cut in an attempt to make it only worth claiming for by those who have bona fide, long term affliction as a result.
Jack Straw, former Secretary for Justice recently told the Today Programme that the whole chain involved in staking one personal injury compensation claim was extremely profitable. From the referrers who bring cases to the table of personal injury lawyers, the commission from the winning insurance firm and the payout for the claim for the victim – it’s all win-win, with the losing insurance firm having to pay out huge sums to cover all of the expenses and the costs.
And it does seem that these personal injury claims justify the ‘weakest necks’ label as there is a massive difference in the amount of claims from within the UK compared to our EU cousins. Especially when you consider that the EuroRAP atlas which risk-maps 180,000 miles of European road has rated Great Britain’s motorways and dual carriageway the safest on the Continent for 2011.
Nick Starling of the ABI backed up Jack Straw’s sentiment, saying that the personal injury system was at fault for allowing ‘one whiplash claim every minute’ to be made in the UK, calling the whole process ‘dysfunctional’ and that it was in urgent need of reform.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
The recent announcement from the Ministry of Justice that the reforms to no win no fee legal arrangements will be delayed by six months has been welcomed by those who say limiting no win no fee will limit access to justice for those suffering from personal injury that could not afford to bring claims otherwise.
The second part of the new Legal Aid bill, which was formerly scheduled to be implemented in October of this year, has been pushed back to an April 2013 roll out in the wake of peer discussion in the House of Lords on January 30. The reform plans were revealed by the MoJ in March of last year, remarking that no win no fee lawyers have been charging massive fees and reaping obscene profits from defendants in successful cases.
The first part of the new bill has also been delayed by six months. An MoJ spokesperson remarked that the Ministry remains committed to reforms in order to control legal fees and court costs for defendants while also working to to deter avoidable claims from going through the courts.
In order for this to be accomplished legal regulations will need to be changed, the spokesperson said, and the MoJ acknowledged the complexities that accompany this arduous task by providing sufficient time to iron out all the niggling details. The MoJ is also conscious that law firms will be in need of enough time to plan ahead for the regulatory changes, in addition to other industry-wide changes that are being implemented in the near future.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
Transport Secretary Justine Greening recently pledged to institute tough new limits on personal injury claims in order to free the UK from the grip of fraudulent whiplash claims.
The Transport Secretary wrote in The Mail on Sunday that wished to ban claims for personal injury compensation in accidents that occurred at very low speeds in order to curb he whiplash claim epidemic gripping Britain. Ms Greening also wanted to target ‘ambulance chasing’ legal professionals who encourage spurious claims and has been campaigning for the introduction of more rigorous medical checks in whiplash cases.
The new proposals come on the heels of a recent investigation revealing that nearly 5,400 claims management companies referring victims of car accidents to law firms for a cash kickback called a ‘referral fee.’ However, the Government has since shut down 707 of these firms for malpractice.
Ms Greening has been incensed at the actions the legal industry has taken in its attempts to block reforms, insiders have said. This is especially egregious because of how car insurance rates have rocketed upward as insurers face having to recover their costs from their customers for the increased claims activity.
However, claims management companies are not the only entities to sell on the details of customers to law firms. A large number of insurance companies are also guilty of accepting referral fees in exchange for customer information, especially if the customer was involved in an accident through no fault of their own, as this means that the insurer is safe from legal action in such a case, though as more insurers participate in taking referral fees, the usefulness of a scheme rapidly approaches zero.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
A scaffolding company from West Bromwich, Sandwell, was fined £10,000 in order to pay personal injury compensation plus £19,000 in costs at Fenton Magistrates Court in Stoke-on-Trent in connection with a serious accident that took place at a factory in Plantation Road on April 30th last year.
The 28-year old man who suffered the personal injury was not actually using the scaffold tree, but erecting it when he fell almost 23 feet (7m) through the roof at the Newstead Industrial Estate facilty last Spring. Gary Hampton was working for Fred Lewis Scaffold Co at the time, from whom he won this subsequent personal injury claim.
The man who, according to the findings, was working for an organisation found guilty of neither supervising nor training its employees to required HSE levels, incurred numerous severe personal injuries as a result of this accident at work.
Following six weeks in hospital and being treated for bruised lungs and breakages to vertebrae, both wrists and shattering his thigh bone, the claimant was told he will never be able to execute manual labour again.
Although he is now out of hospital and has won the undisputed payout for the personal injury claim, the extent of the damage he suffered has left him with severe distress and pain in the leg he shattered; also, both of his wrists, requiring further attention from surgeons, will never gain the strength to facilitate working in the industry – or any other jobs that require dexterity or strength – again.
Following the personal injury claim hearing the health and safety examiner, Alastair Choudhury, went on to point out the accident in itself was totally preventable. If Fred Lewis Scaffold had observed section 2(1) of the HSE guidelines, it is unlikely that Gary Hampton would now be in a position of having a family to support with no way of getting back into the industry within which he was working at the time of the incident.
Mr Choudhury concluded that, had the procedural guidelines been adhered to, namely carrying out an accurate appraisal of the job in hand prior to commencing work on the scaffold, the risk factors would have been clearly identified. Obviously, the staff carrying out the survey would need to have been qualified to a required standard in order to realise that there was an issue, but that never transpired, hence the ruination of Mr Hampton’s livelihood and the subsequent successful personal injury compensation claim.
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by Personal Injury Claims
One man who was paralysed following a car accident has recently won the right to his personal injury compensation claim funds, even in the event that his insurer goes belly-up.
While Anthony Bennett had been successful in his bid for personal injury compensation in 2010, stemming from injuries that left him paralysed in an October 2003 car crash, there had been concerns that his long-term care might have been in jeopardy, as the insurer that was found liable was not covered under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme when the accident occurred. This could mean that his annual compensation payments could cease if the insurer ever shuttered in the future.
Mr Bennett’s spinal injuries were found to be worth £21,500 a year until he reaches 45 years of age, with subsequent payments raising in value as he grows older. As his long-term care needs are expected to be quite expensive, the loss of these annual payments could spell disaster for the paralysed man.
However, the Cornish Guardian newspaper has recently reported that the High Court has confirmed that Mr Bennett will not have to face any such eventuality, as the Motor Insurers’ Bureau will be underwriting the payments, as the MIB will now assume the responsibility for making the payments should the insurance company prove unable to do so. Funded by the insurance industry as a collective, the MIB is used to pay compensation to those caused by drivers without valid insurance as a way to provide for those who have valid medical needs in the wake of an injury.
News Personal Injury Compensation Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
Eighteen recruits for the Greater Manchester Police suffered personal injury at work during an exercise involving CS Gas, personal injury claim experts recently reported.
The recruits all sustained blisters and burns during the training exercise at the police force’s Hough End Centre, located in Chorlton, when the gas being used for training purposes was found to be ten times more potent than normal. CS, a noxious gas used to subdue aggressive individuals and in riot situations, was even more debilitating because it was used under-cover in the training exercise.
Prior to the initial exposure, there was no indication that the dose the officers were exposed to was excessive, as only the usual symptoms of exposure, such as streaming noses and stinging eyes, were observed at the time. However, according to the claims for personal injury compensation following the incident, many officers returned to work the following day with a wide range of blisters and burns.
According to additional reports, the eighteen recruits were given compensatory damages for their experiences understood to be approximately £1,000 each. The remainder of the legal expense is comprised of a myriad of fees and court costs, experts also said.
As a result of the incident, Greater Manchester Police have since revised their use of CS Gas, banning it from all training exercises in its extra strength form. The additional decision was made to no longer conduct training with the noxious gas under-cover but instead requiring all training in open air environments when CS gas is to be used, according to a police review.
News Personal Injury Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
It’s not only the home emergency services that must hate winter. Following the recent report that Staffs borough recently paid out two successful personal injury claims awards of over £100,000 each for two individuals who slipped on ice on schools property, it has come to light that one civilian police employee in Hertfordshire has also won an award for a similar incident.
However, the claim from the police has outdone the two Staffs personal injury claims by a country mile. Hailed as the ‘highest pay out’ recorded so far for one single police employee, the unfortunate victim received £550,000 for likewise slipping on ice, suffering a broken elbow and subsequent chronic pain syndrome for the accident at work.
This was just one personal injury claim that led to Herts Police shelling out a total of £1.2M in awards all told over the last five years to its staff.
Despite the personal injury sum being the second largest recorded total across England and Wales, local MP Oliver Heald was quick to defend the payout of such awards to officers who qualify for them. He expressed the ‘highest admiration’ for any officer who is injured in the line of duty and the fact that they receive due compensation was ‘only right’.
The overall payout made buy the Constabulary to its officers across the country was £12M, a sum labeled as ‘bonkers’ by The Taxpayers’ Alliance. However, Heald added that the payouts to Hertfordshire officers were only made to those whose personal injury claims were necessary. Any that were debatable were subjected to the proper scrutiny and compensation only paid in justifiable cases.
In addition, a further spokesman for the police force, although they couldn’t attribute comments to individual cases, said that, in order to ensure HSE procedures were maintained, any lessons from successful personal injury claims and the accidents that led to them would be learnt.
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by Personal Injury Claims
Over the past six years, West Mercia Police staff suffering personal injury received in excess of £340,000 in personal injury compensation – leading it to be ranked within the 10 police forces most prone to suffer an accident at work.
One officer sustained injuries that were worth almost £100,000 in damages, though West Mercia Police would not elaborate as to the nature of the injury or how the officer came to have suffered it, leading the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a campaign group, to strike out against the payouts. Taken in their totality, the nation’s police forces have paid out nearly £12 million in damages since 2006.
Staff and offices that suffer injuries while in the line of duty are entitled to make damages claims, a spokesperson for the West Mercia Police said. The police force paid out a total of £343,621 in claims, and also claimed the dubious honour of paying out one of the ten most expensive single payouts for the officer with the unnamed injury, who earned £99,999.
On a national scale, Greater Manchester Police paid out the most with nearly £2,586,000 across all their claims. Hertfordshire police claimed the top spot for largest individual payment, with a civilian worker receiving a £550,000 compensation award after a slip in an icy car park resulted in a broken elbow.
Other mysteriously expensive and similarly unexplained injuries included those of an employee of West Midlands Police, where a supposed bruise led to a payout of £120,516. Representatives for the police force said in response to criticisms that the initial injury was described as a bruise, but complications led it to be more serious – though they chose not to elaborate further than that when questioned by the press.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
It emerged yesterday that in Staffordshire over £2M has been paid out in personal injury compensation following accidents, japes and ill-advised teaching methods to staff and pupils across the region’s schools in just three years. The personal injury claims, registered against all three of the borough’s main councils, include sixty-three alone against Stoke-on-Trent seat, thirty-four of which resulted in payouts of almost three quarters of a million pound, whilst the other twenty-nine were not successful in winning the claimants’ compensation.
The single biggest award was made after a woman slipped on a new carpet tile and the subsequent fall broke her ankle; she received over a quarter of a million pounds personal injury compensation alone. Slipping seemed to be the top ranking claim for payouts as two further cases for slipping, these on untreated ice, both reaped over £100,000 in damages for the unlucky victims.
Staffordshire County Council, likewise, did not escape the wrath of pupils and staff lodging personal injury claims against them, with their total bill accumulating to almost £900,000. This huge sum was the result of 52 successful cases won by personal injury claims solicitors for pupils of the council’s schools and 36 winning claims by staff.
Finally, Cheshire East didn’t escape unscathed with payouts of over a half a million pounds to 36 successful personal injury claimants, in total.
The winning cases comprised the sublime to the ridiculous and, it has to be said, the awards for some of the individual cases must have been won by some incredible personal injury lawyers; the resultant comments to the original post, rightly or wrongly, showed the depth of feeling from the local community’s residents at the extent of some of the awards, at face value, compared to the description of the accidents that occurred.
However, there were a number of incidents that highlight just why many think the changes in the Legal Aid system may take the opportunity from genuine injured parties who have a right to no win, no fee representation away.
One pupil was allegedly advised by a member of school staff to catch up with a moving bus that subsequently proceeded to run over her foot; the pupil went on to win her personal injury claim and was awarded £23,649 in compensation.
And in another incident, a pupil was awarded almost £15k in compensation after being blindfolded at the head of a slope and subsequently pushed down it; a merry jape gone wrong? Not when the action was supposedly part of a creative thinking class the pupils were having outdoors.
On the ‘spurious‘ side of the claim-roll, one teacher was paid almost £20k for aggravating an already poorly bad back after sitting on a faulty chair and one jape that backfired saw a claimant win £10,500 after a fire extinguisher went off in their face. The contents of the extinguisher and who released them were not identified in the article. And the payout that led to the furore in the comments section was the personal injury compensation one pupil received after suffering “cuts and bruises” as a result “inadequate” supervision – their payout was £39,525.
Perhaps there is some justification in the government cracking down on spurious personal injury claims, after all…
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
The local authorities have paid out in excess of £2.2 million on personal injury claims following school pranks and accidents over a period of three years, legal experts recently reported.
Cheshire East Council, Staffordshire County Council, and Stoke-on-Trent City Council have been paying out on personal injury compensation cases from a wide range of incidents, from pupils letting off fire extinguishers (supposedly accidentally) to staff and pupils alike slipping on spilt food. Staffordshire City Council paid the most in damages, with 36 employees and 52 pupils making off with nearly £890,000 collectively, with Stoke-on-Trent paying out just under £745,000 on thirty four successful injury claims and Cheshire East more than £590,000 on 36 claims.
There were several substantially sized compensation awards, such as the £260,059 paid out to a woman who slipped on a new carpet tile and broke her ankle, and the two £100,000 payouts made to individuals who slipped on ice present on school grounds. Other successful claims made by pupils and staff included a schoolgirl who was pushed down a slope after being blindfolded by her schoolmates, earning £14,261 in compensation; a claimant who was struck in the face by a fire extingusher’s contents, who earned £10,500; a teaching assistant who claimed a faulty chair aggravated her bad back to the tune of £19,996; and one pupil who had her foot crushed by a bus she had allegedly been told to run after by a teacher, who was paid £23,649 for her injuries.
All such claims are taken very seriously, according to city council finance cabinet member, Sarah Hill. Cllr Hill insisted that local authorities only pay out when they are found to be legally responsible for the injuries.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
The Insurance Fraud Bureau, the recently created body initiated to worm out fraudsters plaguing the automotive insurance sector, has made its first arrest – ironically in Liverpool, close by to the Liverpool Riverside constituency of Louise Ellman, chair of the House of Commons Transport Committee whose report formed the basis guidelines set out to address the misuse of the system.
The arrest has been welcomed by Goldsmith Williams, a firm of lawyers who deal with personal injury claims as part of their duties serving the legal sector. Simon Cottrell, a partner at the firm, went on record stating that their practise will in no way condone the activities of individuals who are partly responsible for driving up the rates of car and van insurance across the UK by claiming falsely for personal injuries that simply do not exist.
Although these costs are eventually passed on to the insurance-paying customer, the fact that there have been so many dubious claims and fingers have been pointing, rightly or wrongly, from all directions at the personal injury claims solicitors for taking on the spurious cases on a no win, no fee basis, it is painting the industry in a very poor light.
Cottrell hopes that this case will send out a ‘clear message’ to other would be chancers; the fact that any suspicious claims will now be dealt with by a specialist investigative body set up within the police, not just be monitored by industry watchdogs, should go a long way to proving the government’s intent on cracking down on this type of criminal activity.
Whiplash has been the fall guy and remains the root cause of many of the suspicious claims. Personal injury claims solicitors have contributed a little to their own downfall by buying details of accident victims via various routes, referred to as ‘sharp practises’. Members of the public who may not have otherwise thought to seek compensation from car accidents have had the seed of possibility planted in their minds through the explosion of the no win, no fee industry. Cottrell added that it is up to the insurance industry to work with the new IFB to curb these practises to prevent any suspicious claims making it to court without thorough investigation.
Banning referral fees for this sort of practise and capping the commission personal injury lawyers can earn, however, may have already gone a long way to doing that, without further intervention needed. When car insurance policies start to decline, you’ll be the first to know whether the new guidelines are working, or not.
News Personal Injury Claim Solicitor
by Personal Injury Claims
One young boy from Hertfordshire has won his medical negligence case after he was left disabled due to delays during his delivery, personal injury compensation claim experts recently reported.
According to personal injury compensation experts writing for the Watford Observer newspaper, Bushey native Mattia Dessi, now seven years old, had suffered from oxygen deprivation during his birth in 2004 at the Watford General Hospital. As a result, the young boy now suffers from spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, living his life from the confines of a wheelchair and unable to communicate with family members in any way save moving his eyes.
The family of Mattia made a medical negligence claim against the NHS Trust for West Hertfordshire Hospitlals for personal injury compensation on behalf of the young boy. Watford General medical staff acted negligently in allowing Mattia’s delivery to be delayed, according to family’s legal representatives.
The NHS Trust had admitted that hospital staff had erred in breaching their duty of care to the young boy, yet told the High Court in London that despite this, they refused to admit that the negligence had caused Mattia’s cerebral palsy.
After intense negotiations with lawyers representing Mattia and his family, the NHS has agreed to 85 per cent liability for the young boy’s medical conditions. The final compensation payout, which has not been made public to the press, is understood to run in to the multiple millions of pounds, as the young boy will need twenty four hour a day care for as long as he lives.
News Personal Injury Compensation Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
One man who nearly choked after he swallowed a rubber mould that had found its way inside a Walkers crisps packet has recently been awarded £3,500 personal injury compensation claim award.
Bamford, Rochdale native, Peter Collins, had been spending some quality time with his son, Joshua, enjoying some barbecue flavoured crisps while watching the television, when he began choking suddenly, according to the man’s personal injury lawyers. The fifty three year old man, who works as a delivery driver, said in a recent interview that if not for the quick thinking of his son, the incident could have had a much more tragic outcome.
Joshua, twenty six years old, leapt to action and initially attempted to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on his choking father. However, as that did not clear the older man’s obstruction, Joshua then proceeded to slap his father vigorously on the back, which then dislodged a rubber mould in the shape of a crisp from the man’s windpipe.
The mould, which is used by Walkers to produce the popular snack food, had done internal damage to the father of two, as was discovered when he went to hospital for testing. Mr Collins’ stomach had absorbed a portion of the chemicals that were impregnated in the mould, doctors said, which prompted him to launch a claim for personal injury compensation against the crisp manufacturer.
Walkers Crisps admitted liability in court, leading Mr Collins to receive a compensation payment of £3,500 for his the nausea and loss of appetite the man suffered in the wake of the incident that left him dependent on medication for a three month period. Walkers Crisps declined the opportunity to comment in the aftermath of the compensation payment.
News Personal Injury Compensation Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
It is usual for a change in policy to make a ripple on the surface of the media of the world press. But when that bill amendment affects the media directly, you can expect it to make one almighty splash, as is the case for the change in the law appertaining to costs and caps for ‘no win, no fee‘ claims, which is being condemned from all sides – apart from the government and media.
The crux of the issue is that, if the bill goes through as per the current amendments, the general public will find themselves with a very costly route to court, irrespective of whether the claim is won or lost. If won, a sizeable chunk of any award will go on to contribute to the costs. This will make it almost impossible to sue a large publishing house, such as the Leveson enquiry is investigating, due to the high cost involved of taking such action against the media, rendering the nett value of any personal injury or damages claim a pittance compared to the size of the actual award itself.
If, however, there is a chance that the case may be lost, the claimant will still have to stump up a contribution towards the costs, if they can find a personal injury solicitor with capped fees to represent them. The government have been very astute in disguising this as a war on personal injury claims, which has won them the backing of the insurance sector and businesses across the UK. Or have they been used as unwitting puppets by the media, as would now appear to be the case?
Revelations today by Lord Patten, who has questioned why governments over the last quarter of a century have ‘paid court’ to the larger media houses of their time in power, make you wonder if that practise is still not rife, despite the ‘phone hacking scandal’ going on right underneath our collective public nose.
Yes, there are spurious personal injury claims transparent to one and all but you could add up the sum of a thousand whiplash injuries and still not arrive at the cost of one claim against the media moguls of our era.
If the bill goes through, newspapers would be all but untouchable other than by those who already have enough money not to care what a Fleet Street editor deems fit to print about them. For families like the Dowlers, who, by their own admission, could not have even brought their claim to court without the ‘no win, no fee’ system in place would have to suffer these grave invasions of privacy in silence as the press walked rough-shod all over them. The press don’t like it when they’re the ones in the limelight!
Yet, like the workers rites that are under threat, so is the voice of the common man, also likely to be smothered by a media machine that shouts the loudest both because it can and because it knows exactly how to work the wheels of a government to deliver just what it wants, on cue.
News Personal Injury Claim
by Personal Injury Claims
The bubble may be about to burst for many personal injury claim solicitors who have relied on referral fees as their source of income as the government looks to cut back on no win, no fee cases being a part of everyday law. From their being seemingly thousands of websites hosting groups of lawyers prepared to take on your claim without you having to pay anything up front, you may find that those volumes start to dwindle as and when anyone with a claim is expected to pay part of the fee up front, whether they go on to win the case or not.
Likewise, the government are looking into ways to not automatically hold the employer responsible for an accident at work if they have strayed beyond the boundaries laid out by the HSE, as is currently the case. This will call for more skilled personal injury lawyers and not just those spawned from the compensation culture that Cameron is attempting to cull.
Here at ipersonalinjuryclaims.co.uk we do not solely rely on one group of personal injury solicitors but those who we believe are best suited to be at the forefront of integrity in the market place and have the utmost ability to fight your case based on its grounds.
You can, of course, find other organisations to fight your personal injury claim, but it is worth knowing that we have checked the credentials of all of those we have chosen to help you win your medical negligence, car accident or accident at work claim.
Here is just a short summary of what it takes to become a personal injury solicitor; you are otherwise advised to check this out before you appoint one to fight your case.
The Law Society dictates who is listed in the personal injury panel; in order to appear on this list a solicitor must gain three years practise in their particular field. There is a separate panel for clinical negligence; if your claim is of this nature, this is the list you must consult to see if the chosen personal injury solicitor appears there.
You can always claim through your insurance policy, who may choose to put you in touch with a lawyer direct. Insurance firms should regulate the solicitors they appoint, but it is still worth taking the time to double-check the credentials of a personal injury solicitor appointed to you in this manner.
There is an association for personal injury lawyers (APIL, funnily enough), whom you would assume are specialists in personal injury claims. A recent report has suggested that, once a qualified solicitor has paid the membership fee to be a part of the organisation, they can use the association without having to indicate their exact field of specialisation. If you appoint a lawyer through APIL, they probably are qualified to fight your accident claim, but again, it is always worth checking on the Law Society panel to ensure their name appears there.
Another ruse being deployed in order to compete with the current surgent market for personal injuries, such as whiplash, is websites who use misleading advertising making the consumer believe they are the actual ‘legal experts’, whereas they may only be a referral agency for someone you could perhaps appoint direct. As a guide, only sites actually hosted by solicitors are actually allowed to advertise the fact that they are real solicitors, otherwise it’s illegal; their services will be transparent to all and leave you in no doubt that they are the real deal.
It is legal to use the word solicitor if you make it clear to the customer that you are a referral or comparison website for their services; because of the volume of business that these types of services provide, it can be cheaper to go through them than go direct via the personal injury solicitor’s own site.
Why not find the lawyer to fight your personal injury claim using our facility?
News Personal Injury Claim Solicitor
by Personal Injury Claims
After he tripped over a pothole, one teenager was left with serious brain injuries as a result, according to accident claim experts familiar with the incident.
The nineteen year old, who fractured his skull in the incident, had been running for a bus when he tripped and fell, leaving him with a fractured skull as he languished in a nine day long semi-coma. Now suffering from memory loss and facing an increased risk of developing epilepsy in the future, the young man has no recollection of the immediate moments following his fall, but with the help of friends and family, has begun o piece things back together.
The young man’s personal injury solicitors recounted how the next clear memory he had after the injuries was waking up in hospital with his niece standing over him, though he stated he had uncertainty as to the identity of other family members due to his brain injuries. The fall damaged his cerebrum, temporal lobe, and frontal lobe in the fall, with his skull fracture running from just above his right eye to around the back of his head on the right side, according to his personal injury claims.
The young man is currently involved in a injury compensation case with West Dunbartonshire Council, the local authority who was responsible for the condition of the roadway. The council has not commented as to whether or not they were aware of the pothole before the young man suffered his injury, or when the pothole was repaired, though a month after he suffered his injury, the young man returned to the scene of his accident and discovered someone had placed a yellow marking adjacent to the pothole – indicating that the local authority might have been aware of it at that point in time.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
A recently published report says that the new legal aid bill, in its fervor to eliminate personal injury compensation loopholes, could work to actually increase the suffering of many domestic violence victims in the UK.
According to women’s rights groups Welsh Women’s Aid and Rights of Women, nearly 50 per cent of all victims of domestic violence will no longer be eligible for legal aid if the proposed Ministry of Justice cuts are adopted. The new report comes on the heels of the examination by the House of Lords of the new legal aid bill designed to limit ‘ambulance chasing’ antics of personal injury solicitors.
MPs cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater, women’s rights groups say, in their zeal to control the costs of personal injury claims, as this could consign women victimised by domestic violence to no access to justice. The evidential criteria used by the legal aid bill changes must reflect the reality of domestic violence and the experiences of women in order to ensure that domestic violence victims are given the protection they need, the report said, adding that evidence from social services, health services, and specialist domestic violence organisations must be included.
The report also found issue with government proposals to apply a time limit of 12 months to evidential criteria, as doing so would mean that women with domestic violence injunctions in place would be precluded from using such an injunction as evidence of violence if the injunction is over 12 months old. The realities of domestic violence are not reflected by such a proposal, especially in regards to the constant risk that perpetrators pose to their victims, as there is evidence of these perpetrators using private law proceedings to remain in contact with victims even after they had been in safety for quite some time.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
A no win, no fee claim is, in essence, when a personal injury solicitor accepts your accident claim case and represents you in court, in order for you to be awarded the due compensation for said claim.
At the end of the last millennium, Legal Aid was adapted to C.F.A., or Conditional Fee Agreement, in the case of accident claims. This legislation rules that whereby you, the petitioner, appoints an injury claim solicitor to fight your corner; upon winning the case, said representatives and fees and costs are deducted from the remuneration awarded to you. In the unlikely event that the personal injury solicitor you have appointed loses your case, you owe them nothing; they are then left to pay for their own cost and time.
You will all have seen the adverts on television promoting ‘no win, no fee’ lawyers asking you to contact them “if you believe you have a case”. In most instances, they will be able to assess the details of your claim quite promptly. The law is currently very black and white where the Health and Safety Executive are involved. If the defendant, the party you are claiming against who you believe is responsible for the incident and subsequent injury, has stepped outside the guidelines set out by the HSE, the personal injury lawyer can almost guarantee success and will accept the case and, more than likely, win you the compensation you are due. If the body involved has not strayed beyond these boundaries, you will not have a case, i.e. you are at fault for your incident of distress, meaning no case, so the personal injury lawyer will more than likely politely refuse to represent you.
However, the government are on a very real drive to reduce the costs paid out as a result of accident claims and they are working closely with insurance companies to curb the rising costs resulting from personal injury solicitors winning cases on a no win, no fee basis. Very soon you, the petitioner, may have to pay at least some of the amount of the costs up front before taking any personal injury claim to court.
Also, as it stands, if you have an accident at work, your employer is immediately guilty if they have not adhered to guidelines set out in HSE legislation. The government are also looking into ways to change that situation, in favour of the employer, in the near future.
If you are uncertain whether you have a claim, our hand-selected bodies of personal injury solicitors will be able to confirm your enquiry, as per the details outlined above. For the time being, give it a go – whilst you still have nothing to lose.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
Figures released for the final quarter of 2011 show that, once again, consumers in the UK have been hit with rises in car insurance renewal premiums, with comprehensive insurance rising by 5.4% for the three months to the end of December. The AA once again has pointed the finger of blame at personal injury claims for the extra costs that the blameless masses are expected to stump up, contributing mainly to the payouts for compensation claims being fought – and won – by personal injury solicitors up and down the country.
The figure is a sharp rise compared to the year figure as a whole. The annual percentage rise for comprehensive insurance is quoted at 15.3%, making the last quarter account for more than a third of the entire year-on-year increase.
Figures fly in the face of Cameron’s crackdown
This is bad news for everone who’s been at the forefront of the press releases in the last fortnight pledging to curb the compensation culture; bad news for everyone except the successful claimants and the personal injury solicitors who have made their fees along the way, that is.
It’s not only the politicians who are shocked by these latest increase; the AA have been montoring the market all year through its insurance arm. Its director, Simon Douglas “expected a much smaller rise,” especially after the the figures posted in the third quarter of the year actually bucked the trend, dipping slightly.
Accidents numbers are falling but claims are rising
Another concept that Douglas sees as being “wrong” is the fact that UK roads are becoming safer places, based on the reduction in the number of accidents, but he confirmed that “injury claims are rising,” in contradiction to those accounts.
At least the trend is slowing; if you go back to March 2011, the year-on-year car insurance increase was 40%; in real terms, consumers are now paying approximately half again for their premiums than a year and a half ago, much of which is attributed to the spate of spurious whiplash claims that are being paid out.
MP’s have even gone as far as to accuse insurance companies and personal injury lawyers of coming together over ‘no win, no fee’ cases with lease-hire firms to punish the competition by taking them for more than a claim is actually due.
And costs are only going to go one way for female drivers as the EU ‘gender discrimination’ ruling takes affect; even though the fairer sex is proven to be safer on the roads than their male counterparts, the European Court of Justice has ruled that they cannot be given a discount based on their sex alone, according to the AA.
This is turning into a battle royal, with governments, European Courts and personal injury solicitors fighting for and against some of the biggest names in the insurance industry. It should make for an interesting 2012, but how far will insurance policies rise before sectors of the market, like young drivers who really have seen sharper increases than any other sector, simply cannot afford to put their cars on the road, knocking back the stuttering economy even further with the subsequent reduction in car sales themselves?
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
The Department of Health has recently informed hospitals to no longer include no win no fee adverts for personal injury solicitors in leaflets produced by the NHS and distributed to hospital patients, industry experts recently reported.
Some NHS trusts have been using the adverts to boost revenue, as some hospitals receive as much as £85,000 in annual payments from personal injury claim solicitor firms, while other hospitals receive uniform or equipment donations for including the adverts in NHS leaflets that also provide patients information on wound and illness treatment advice. These trusts need to follow the rules, according to Health Minister Simon Burns, who said he would be contacting NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, in order to demand these hospitals to abide by the rules barring the inclusion of these adverts.
Patients need to be focusing on recovering from their ailments and injuries, Mr Burns said, instead of being hounded by ambulance chasing solicitors or adverts for law firms at their local A&E department. This is not acceptable behaviour, he added, and vowed to ask Sir David to remind hospitals of this fact.
Lawyers do more than provide cash or donations to NHS trusts that choose to carry their adverts. Many will agree not to bring legal action against these hospitals but instead seek damages from local authorities or companies, something that has led to councils warning that public funds are being spent on spurious compensation claims.
Hospitals have been banned from running lawyer adverts since 2007, as adverts for legal services have been classed alongside alcohol or tobacco adverts, but NHS trusts often face temptation due to the incentive to earn some extra cash, experts say.
News Personal Injury Claim Solicitor
by Personal Injury Claims
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers president David Bott has raised concerns over the government’s intentions to make “swathing cuts” in favour of organisations over its employees.
Within the recent statement made by the government were indications that it plans to introduce an extension to the process of making new personal injury claims after being involved in a road traffic accident, presumably to reinforce its recent statement that it is cracking down on bogus whiplash injuries, which are costing the economy millions.
The full details of the change in legislation are yet to be released, but on the back of a fortnight of singling out ‘compensation culture’ in his talks to industry chiefs since Christmas, David Cameron has made it clear that he will use every power at his command to protect insurance companies from accident claims that have little grounds for compensation.
Mr. Bott’s primary concern, as is that of the personal injury claim solicitors he represents, is that members of society who have genuine accident claims are going to be ruled out altogether, against a backdrop of making it a more prolonged process for injury solicitors to bring their claim to court, hence making it less worthwhile them pursuing on the claimants’ behalf.
Not only will the ‘swathing cuts’ have an immediate impact on road incidents, but will also seriously affect an employee’s ability or willingness to pursue small claims brought against their employers.
Mr Bott has extended an olive branch, by going on record as saying that the body of lawyers are themselves eager to help uncover efficiencies in the system that help to promote genuine claimants bring their cases to justice, but this envisaged extension is premature, as the latest streamlining is yet to prove its viability as a working model.
The streamlining may have already watered down the rules governing employees’ safety too far, exposing them to unnecessary risk. The onus has all been placed on the legal costs to business in such cases, rather than companies being assured of their protection, if they have followed and acted upon HSE guidelines.
This is in no way a politically-motivated site, and has no reason to gain from bias, but this eroding the rights of workers in favour of corporate bodies doesn’t half feel the same as it did last time the Tories were in power, commanded by [she] who shall not be named…
…where’s our Harry?
News Personal Injury Claims News
by Personal Injury Claims
The Health and Safety Executive has prosecuted a demolition worker from Croydon for the role he played in the accident at work sustained by a colleague, personal injury experts recently reported.
Croydon native Devon Stoner, forty four years of age, had been working for Kent-based Sloane Demolition Limited on West Malling’s Leybourne Grange Hospital’s demolition along with for additional colleagues at the time of the accident. The five Sloane employees were working on a brick reclamation project on the former hospital site when Mr Stoner got behind the wheel of an excavator and started manoevuring the thirteen tonne piece of machinery about the demolition site, only to lose control and smash into a nearby wall.
Unfortunately, one of Mr Stoner’s colleagues was adjacent to the crash site, resulting in his becoming trapped when the wall struck by the excavator collapsed, according to his accident claims. The incident left the injured worker with severe injuries to his legs, such as a broken ankle, and the man needed a surgical procedure to insert a steel plate into his leg in order to allow his shattered shin bone to heal properly.
The HSE investigation conducted after the incident found that Sloane Demolition had not authorised Mr Stoner to operate the excavator. Additionally he had not received any training in its use, which meant that he had no place behind the wheel at the time of the incident.
After admitting to breaching health and safety regulations at Maidstone Magistrates’ Court, Mr Stoner was told to pay court costs of £500 and sentenced to 120 hours’ worth of community service..
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
According to a report in the scotsman.com this week, Ally Macbeal is indeed the reason for our compensation culture and why anyone who trips over a brick is ready to proceed with a personal injury claim.
Of course, that was only the summary of the article and just served as a metaphor to prove a point. In Scotland, the law is slightly different than down here, south of the border. Courts there tend not to be so lenient with awarding the payouts for accident claims that we see in England. Indeed, the article points to the culture in the US as being out of hand, branding it the ‘litigation capital of the world‘. A look closer to home will tell you that, with over half-a-milion injury claims for whiplash across the UK last year, England is becoming a suburb of North America, in that respect, and others, as has been suspected for years.
Other reasons for car insurance premiums rising
The article in the online post pointed out the fact that, although car insurance premiums were spiralling out of control, confirmed by one government committee as well as from a variety of other sources, the reasons were not wholly as one would suspect.
It is not, as we all suspect, due to the amount of accidents on UK roads, quoted as dropping by 25% since 2005; nor is it, with the economy tempting more and more people to think about crime, because of the number of car thefts and van breakins rapidly rising.
What is worrying for those who have not yet had the pleasure of renewing their car tax this term, is that the rise of 70% in personal injury claims over the last six years is seriously impacting on insurance underwriters profitabilty. AA Insurance are very concerned that insurers involved in injury claims from the auto industry are paying out £1.22 for every £1.00 they receive in income, although figures for Scotland from the same organisation suggest that the lack of tolerance by Scottish courts for this type of culture have helped to keep rises a lot lower, up to this point.
In response to the article, one commentator speculated that the ‘no win, no fee’ solicitors were originally introduced to help reduce the legal aid bill.
Before the availability of personal injury solicitors who could take on your fee in this manner, they had to be convinced 100% before they would represent your case, spurious or not, in court.
Because of the success of these cases, it wasn’t long before more personal injury solicitors wanted a piece of the action and found a route to market by approaching, and now avertising to, victims of accidents who may otherwise have thought twice before, or even dreamed of, making an accident claim.
Whether you agree or not, or whether you care to justify the rise in auto insurance, there is a lot more to be made in one successful personal injury claim than a lifetime of car insurance premium rises for any one individual.
News Personal Injury Claims News
by Personal Injury Claims
Slashing legal aid for family, social welfare, and medical negligence cases and this saving £240 million will only result in shifting additional costs to other departments of the government, a recently released report says.
As the legal aid bill is sent back to the House of Lords, the total cuts of £350 million proposed by the Ministry of Justice face an uphill battle with £240 million of the cutbacks to the three key areas leading to an additional £139 million in unbudgeted taxpayer costs, according to the King’s College, London study. The report also found that the removal of legal aid for those in need of medical negligence solicitors would see the £10.5 million the National Health Service would purportedly make dwarfed by additional costs of approximately £30 million.
The report’s compiler, Graham Cookson, remarked that the court service would be put under greater strain and the NHS would face greater legal costs as more personal injury claimants represented themselves. The likelihood of the reforms actually contributing to the reduction of the financial deficit by a significant manner was low, the report concluded.
Law Society chief executive, Des Hudson, commented on the research findings by stating that the government’s proposed cuts will affect access to justice and effectively limit the courts to only those affluent enough to afford to seek legal counsel. The Law Society commissioned the research study.
The Ministry of Justice responded to the criticism by stating that the UK has one of the most costly legal aid systems in the world at more than £2 billion per year. The government simply cannot afford to continue to pay out in the current financial climate, the MoJ added.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
The number of increasing whiplash claims is the primary reason the nation’s motorists are facing high insurance premiums, insurers and MPs recently reported.
With car accident claim websites advertising thousands of pounds in cash advances and no win no fee solicitors, industry experts say people are faced with highly tempting incentives to make whiplash claims against insurers. However, the Transport Select Committee recently said that the government needs to step in restricting the number of personal injury claims involving whiplash by requiring claimants to adhere to a stricter burden of proof.
A recently published report by the committee made additional recommendations with an eye towards taming the so-called ‘compensation culture’ in the UK, such as banning insurers from selling client details to third parties who then pursue claims through the courts. Doing this would prevent the volume of claims rising so precipitously, the committee said, and would benefit consumers by reducing insurance costs as well.
Jack Straw, the MP who provided evidence for the report’s inquiry, remarked that whiplash is less an injury and more a way for imaginative individuals to milk the system for as much cash as they can. Yet even though the number of road accident casualties occurring over the past six years has dropped by 23 per cent – something that would normally lead to insurance costs to drop as well – claims over the same period of time have increased by 70 per cent, with whiplash taking the lion’s share of these 790,000 annual claims.
The public health body that specialises in providing medical guidance to governmental agencies, NICE, has said that there is actually no formal diagnosis whiplash currently in use.
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An amazing study by Liverpool Victoria (LV) who questioned General Practitioners from across the UK suggests that 87% of doctors over the last two years have examined patients who have totally fabricated the injuries they claim to have sustained following an incident they were making an accident claim for against their car insurance.
Further to those personal injury claimants who hadn’t a whisker of truth in their complaint, a further 6 out of 10 doctors have admitted to assessing accident claim victims whose ‘condition’ was dubious.
As the insurance experts perhaps suspected in commissioning the survey, more and more British citizens are being tempted into making claims given the recent advertising by personal injury claim solicitors who offer to take your accident on a ‘no win, no fee‘ basis.
However, with David Cameron coming out and capping claims and referral fees that such entities can receive from any one case, these figures may soon decline, or so is hoped by the insurance sector who are obliged to pay out personal injury compensation claims in light of a doctor’s evidence, following a claim against policies incorporating this type of cover.
In a recent statement by AA Insurance, owing to ‘crash for cash‘ gangs who make thousands from staging injuries, the insurance sector is paying out £1.22 for every £1.00 of income in cases such as these personal injury compensation claims. If the British public is looking to apportion blame for the rising price of car insurance, they need look no further than the “Bogus Britain” this culture has created.
As well as the marketing through magazines, TV and radio, more than fifty percent of the doctors who took part in LV’s survey admitted to being approached by firms representing personal injury advisors who were trying to extract a list of possible claimants from their records in 2011. Twenty percent also regarded this a usual occurrence, as often as once a week. Unsurprising, as the cost per lead has been put at £300 through ‘legitimate’ means.
For everyone who has a legitimate claim, we have our own list of hand-picked personal injury lawyers to compare for your accident or injury claim.
To everyone else, we echo LV’s statement, following the results of this latest poll, revealing the extent to which Britons are being driven to extract money from every avenue possible. A spokesman for the insurance company, John O’Roarke, warned the public that making a claim without actually receiving an injury is a breach of UK law. The punishment, if caught, is at least a sizeable fine, even a custodial sentence if the charges brought against the claimant are deemed serious enough.
In support of the insurance companies who cannot continue to suffer losses of this nature, offices in the government are looking at ways to crack-down on fraudulent compensation claims for whiplash slipping through the net; personal injury solicitors, as mentioned, may think twice about taking certain cases on, now that their referral fees have been limited so do only claim if your injury is genuine.
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by Zebedeerox
A recent report by the Association of British Insurers into UK insurance fraud has turned up shocking revelations. More than 120,000 fraudulent insurance claims were identified, totalling a staggering £16M.
Claims against motor insurance were the most prevalent in the study; one individual alone, part of a larger gang who stage ‘crash for cash’ accidents, was identified as being involved on 90 incidents, racking up claims of £1.8M in personal injury claims. These organised criminals see this opportunity to make vast amounts of money for only lenient punishment attached to the crime (if they get caught) as a way of making thousands of pounds with consummate ease.
However, insurance companies and personal injury solicitors alike are working together to crack down on fraudulent cases as the UK is starting to live up to its new tag in personal injury circles of “Bogus Britain”.
This is a move welcomed by AA Insurance. One of its directors, Simon Douglas, has highlighted the plight of insurance underwriters who are suffering considerable losses made within the industry. By their reckoning, every one pound being invested in insurance policies by domestic and commercial fleet owners is having to be repaid in personal injury or accident claims at a rate of £1.22.
This in some way accounts for the horrendous rises being seen for vehicle insurance renewal policies, which have been kept unrepresentatively low due to other market factors. In recent times, insurance companies have placed market share above profit, in the hope to rise as one once there became a level playing field. However, with the rise in popularity of comparison websites for personal injury solicitors and fleet and commercial vehicle insurance, those forecast opportunities to increase the renewal premiums never occurred.
Nick Starling, an ABI director, can see the point of view from an honest customer’s objections to having to pay more for their premiums to fund the fraudulent personal injury claims. It is difficult for insurers to identify or even prove whiplash as a result of a car accident, especially when the claim can emanate from a third party claim or someone foregoing their no claims bonus to claim on their own policy.
The problem is, most civilians who do claim, identified predominantly as ‘white collar’ or middle class individuals, do not see it as a crime, especially with so many personal injury lawyers offering to take their case on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.
If you believe you have been involved in an accident and have the right to make a personal injury claim but are worried about the consequences if you are classed as an insurance cheat should the case fail, you can read more about what is considered personal injury claim fraud at http://www.insurancefraudbureau.org/report/; alternatively, consult one of our injury solicitors who can identify whether you’re eligible to make that accident claim, or not.
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MPs recently warned the government that whiplash is to blame for rising insurance costs, as some personal injury solicitors may be capitalising on the subjective nature of the medical diagnosis to drive legal actions.
The Transport Committee’s recently released report on car insurance rate increases says that the personal injury compensation claim threshold for whiplash cases must be raised in order to combat rising premiums. The government also needs to do more to clamp down on the so-called ‘compensation culture’ that is gripping the UK, the report said.
Claims management companies, solicitors, and insurers are all driving premium prices up by encouraging those involved in road traffic accidents to make claims, according to Transport Committee chair, Louise Ellman. She urged the insurance industry to stop this encouragement, calling on insurers to do away with selling on their customers’ personal details to law firms and other third parties.
Nearly two out of every three Brits have received spam emails, text messages, and telephone calls from these ‘ambulance chasing’ companies and law firms, Contact Law said. The online solicitor service reported that 35 per cent of individuals in the UK are contacted at least once every week.
Whiplash injuries are quite expensive for insurers due to the subjective nature of the diagnosis. Moreover, even though the number of accidents on roads in the UK has declined by a significant margin, claims have risen continuously – with the AA claiming that 7 out of 10 of these claims are for whiplash-related injuries.
The Committee recommended that new legislation be introduced that places a higher threshold on evidence of whiplash injuries to discourage the practice if claims continue to be high.
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One employee of a major high street chocolate retailer suffered a personal injury at work when she was trapped within a machine used to wrap chocolate, according to personal injury experts familiar with the incident.
Thorntons worker, Ellen Yardley, had been working the foil wrapping machine at a Somercotes-based plant for the chocolatier when the rotating parts of the machine trapped her right hand as she tried to clean the interior of its output chute. The thirty seven year old Derbyshire native suffered a fracture to her middle finger in the accident at work, which prevented her from returning to her role for more than two months.
The Government’s Health and Safety Executive launched an investigation into the incident, discovering that the machine’s safety guards were not adequate as they fell below the safety standards required by law. As a result, the HSE prosecuted Thorntons PLC at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court for regulatory breeches.
Somercotes, Derbyshire-based Thorntons PLC, of Thornton Park, admitted to breaching both the Management of Health and Safety at Work and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment regulations during the hearing, which led to the court fining the company £20,000. Thorntons was also ordered to pay a total of £7,680 in court costs as well for the role it played in Ms Yardley’s injuries.
The thirty seven year old’s injuries could have been avoided quite easily if Thorntons had taken the time to carry out a risk assessment adequately on the machinery she had been using, according to one HSE inspector’s comments in the wake of the hearing.
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by Zebedeerox
Personal injury lawyers are being accused from all quarters of leading the ‘compensation culture‘ prevalent in our society and, as such, placing a burden on the rest of the UK through the rising cost of their insurance policies.
‘No win no fee‘ lawyers lay a path to payouts for those who would otherwise not even consider making accident claims. This ‘justice’, as the law sees it, is hitting insurers hard – every penny in compensation they pay out literally gets added onto the budget per quote based upon the expected number of policies sold that their analytical departments predict for the relative period.
With the numbers of successful cases rising, the knock on effect is being felt in the budgets across the country as injury claims push up insurance premiums across the board.
It is this ‘nothing to lose’ promise that has not only encouraged people with genuine cases, such as personal injury at work and the undeniable compensation as things stand, but also has seen fraudsters trying their luck making spurious claims. How do you disprove whiplash, even if you monitor an individual wearing a neck-brace?
the money is in the list
A more worrying trend for the insurance firms who will inevitably foot the bill for personal injury claims is that of the personal injury claim solicitors buying lists of UK individuals involved in accidents and contacting them to see if they can represent them when making any injury claim.
As many individuals simply put accidents down to a part of life and are perhaps unaware of any compensation that may be due to them, just one successful case could theoretically cover the cost of the purchase of the victims details.
But these details are not cheap, so the insurance company buying the details is taking a risk. Who is to say that the person is either disinterested or has not already appointed a personal injury lawyer to represent them?
However, if the lawyers do get in there first, that initial outlay or referral fee, which can cost up to £300 per accident claim, will be worth much more to the lawyer making the successful claim.
The flip side is, there is a losing side; inevitably, and unfortunately, that could be your insurance firm, and guess who pays the lost dividend? Eventually, you.
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David Cameron has really got his tail up about no win no fee personal injury solicitors and there penchant for encouraging the UK public to indulge itself in the current ‘compensation culture’ we find ourselves in, alongside the ‘big community’.
The fingers are being pointed at the personal injury lawyers who are springing up on our TVs promising us 100% of the compensation and that, if they decide you have a case, they’ll more or less guarantee you a payout. A bit like having a go on the lottery when you already know some of the numbers.
Well, the empire is striking back, no doubt, with the PM’s statement in Maidenhead last week that companies were no longer going to automatically be made the scapegoats for injuries at work, but that really is only the tip of the iceberg.
One can’t help but feel that Mr Cameron has made a rod for his own back. Asking the UK public to muck in and volunteer their services for jobs which they may not be fully trained to do but, in their willingness to show their blue blood and help the community, they have a crack at.
You can almost imagine the personal injury solicitors sitting on the park bench with The Times, briefcase and umbrella just waiting for one of Cameron’s dears to trip over the hosepipe that Bert has left on the path while he’s gone to fetch his flask of chowder from the boot.
In reality, it may not be the Tories who actually go out and mow the greens and scrub the graffiti off the walls alongside those doing community service; more likely it is those from lower income families or individuals on the dole – part of Cameron’s target market, no less – who actually see this opportunity for what it is – a chance to make that elusive personal injury claim and set themselves up for untold weeks of extra benefits.
Many of the traditional Tories – and I’m not saying that this is the case, today – have no conception of what it’s like to be without work or money. This is a perfect cloak for those who, in their guise of helping out the ‘big community’, are actually manoeuvring themselves into a position where they can manipulate the system, further.
You ask if personal injury solicitors are all to blame for the compensation culture? Just look at the unemployment figures and what those without work are being asked to do, and then you’ll get a better idea of why people are so tempted to go for this easy money – they ain’t getting any from anywhere else.
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An increasing number of plastic surgeons in the UK are finding themselves named in medical negligenceclaims brought by patients, according to research recently conducted by the Medical Defence Union.
The MDU, which provides medical negligence solicitors to represent more than 50 per cent of the UK’s surgeons and doctors whenever they stand accused of negligence of malpractice, stated that weight-loss procedures, nose reductions eyelid operations, facelifts, and breast surgeries account for four out of every five of personal injury claims made by patients against doctors. In 45 per cent of cosmetic surgery cases, personal injury compensation is awarded, the MDU research found, while general medical compensation cases are only upheld 30 per cent of the time.
The increase was attribute to a massive rise in volume of both surgical procedures and expectations of patients of perfect outcomes, the Union said, while surgeons neglecting to get proper consent from patients and performing substandard work also played a role. The MDU could not reveal more detailed figures due to commercial confidentiality issues, though it did say that there was a ‘significant’ rise in the number of cosmetic claims occurring over the past five years.
The data highlighted the need for better regulation for cosmetic surgical procedures, according to medical experts. Council member for the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Steve Cannon, commented that the MDU figures coincide with a major report conducted two years ago by a national patient outcome and death enquiry.
In related news, the government recently said that had concerns regarding breast implants manufactured by PIP, a French company rocked by scandal, should have the ability to have them removed at no charge by either their cosmetic surgery clinic or by the NHS.
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With personal injury claim awards growing ever higher, many have turned to injury solicitors for their role in encouraging the so-called ‘compensation culture’ in the UK, accusing them of pursuing the types of compensation clams that result in increased insurance premiums for the rest of us.
Lawyers operating under a ‘no win no fee‘ conditional fee arrangement scheme offer access to justice for those that have been injured but could not afford to bring a case otherwise, and thus provide an important service for lower income earning British households. However, the no-risk nature of no win no fee has resulted in more claimants coming forward with sometimes spurious claims, which can run up tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs in a single case, and with each payout made to a claimant, an insurance company faces the need to recover their outgoings any way they can – with the end result being increased premiums.
Solicitors specialising in such cases may be to blame for encouraging claimants out of a desire for generating legal fees that the losing side will have to pay. Moreover, many legal firms have been purchasing the personal details of individuals involved in car accidents or other incidents where personal injuries were sustained in order to find Brits that may be interested in making claims, and then contacting them in an effort to drive up business.
Called ‘referral fees,’ these payments are made to the insurer of an individual who has reported an accident, and these insurance companies are more than happy to make as much as £300 for each name and telephone number sold in this manner. Of course, this spells bad news for the insurer of the other party involved in the accident, as now the law firm, once getting their new claimant aboard, will go after them for a massive compensation payout – which once more leads to increased premium prices as the defendant has to recover a sizable sum, sometimes in the millions of pounds.
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David Cameron today announced the removal of large swathes of health and safety regulations put in place to protect the UK workforce, based on findings of an independent report by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, King’s College, last year.
Is this move simply to clear out the draws stuffed with red tape or is it yet another guise by the Conservatives to remove the rights of the British worker to make a personal injury claim against his or employee or a third party in the workplace?
The Prime Minister made the announcement as he addressed SME leaders at a conference in Maidenhead and the change will mean that employers will no longer be the immediate scapegoats if HSE regulations are breached.
Very much with the economy in mind and protecting small businesses who may fall foul of the compensation culture rife in the UK, Cameron also hinted that insurance companies who can take massive slices of personal injury claim payouts as their commission will have a limit imposed on the amount that they can pocket from any individual accident at work or negligence claim.
No date has yet been set in stone for the upheavals for the legislations but the big names in the personal insurance sector will be asked to attend a meeting at number 10 in February to obtain their perspectives on the accident claims payouts and how they would deal with the situation.
Given the news that the maximum fee per claim any lawyer could make from a personal injury claim would be capped at £25,000 in an attempt to stop speculative claims reaching the court in the first place, HSE executives and insurance companies have seen this as a bitter sweet pill served by the government.
Although acknowledging that the regulations do need ‘tweaking’, the system itself is in good shape and a vast overhaul could be deterimental to its usefulness as a protective aid and end up having a negative effect on businesses. If companies start to let standards drop, if the amendments move too far away from protecting the workforce, this may result in much more serious personal injury claims in the future.
In addition, it has been suggested that if insurers cannot get there fees from the payouts for accidents at work or by the public sector in medical negligence cases, they may start to increase the premiums in the first instance. Therefore businesses and the NHS will face a definite cost rather than a possible one as a result of a personal injury claim.
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Personal injury lawyers may soon be earning less from their personal injury cases, as David Cameron has been earning plaudits from insurers for taking on the ‘monster’ that has been the health and safety compensation claim industry.
Mr Cameron claimed that in some personal injury compensation cases, some small companies had no choice but to make settlements out of court due to fears over incredibly high legal costs. Insurance providers have been lobbying long and hard for an end to the so-called ‘compensation culture’ in the UK, and have been all in favour of capping legal fees at £25,000 in these cases.
Industry body the Association of British Insurers has been raising complaints about an increase in exaggerated and spurious legal claims, which they say are accompanied by legal fees that are excessive. The number of claims made against insurers increased by 72 per cent from 2002 figures, according to the ABI.
Director-general for the ABI, Otto Thoresen, remarked that the industry body has campaigned long and hard to put the brakes on the compensation bandwagon in order to minimise excessive legal costs and frivolous compensation claims. However, legal professionals were not pleased with remarks made by the prime minister to a Maidenhead business audience, stating that the government was not acting with proper consideration as to how injured people would be affected by the changes.
Mr Cameron also reiterated previous warnings from deputy prime minister Nick Clegg that it was the intention of the government to renew their crackdown on tax avoidance in this March’s Budget.
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If you’re going to use sub-contract workers, it is paramount that you protect their safety, even if you tend to take less precautionary measures for yourself or your own employees.
That is the message following a ruling by Harlow Magistrates Court as three separate contractors were found to be at fault, breaching health and safety regulations for ‘working at height’ under two separate sub-sections of the legislation, as the judges presided over the personal injury compensation due to the roofer.
Although of little compensation to Jeremy Bishop, the unfortunate worker who suffered life-changing personal injuries from the fall that has left him in a wheel chair for the rest of his life, the three firms were served with fines totalling £53,000.
Furthermore, V. Page Bldg Services were served with a prohibition notice to suspend work until mid-rails were fitted on the scaffolding, the oversight found to be the fault of the roofer’s preventable accident.
According to Adam Hills, the Health and Safety Inspector, the unfortunate fall simply would not have happened if only those eventually found to be at fault had observed the guidelines set out in the industry standards. There are specific rules for setting up guards rails as edge protection for sitework carried out above ground level and, in this case, those regulations were not adhered to.
Vincent Page, director of V. Page Building Services Limited, originally won the order to build an extension to a property in Loughton, North East London. In order to fulfil the contract, he hired Quality Roofs Ltd of Chingford to handle the roofing aspect of the job, governed by boss, Alan Tyler. The third party involved in this triangle of blame was the scaffolder, Philip Blakeman, t/a Access Specialists.
All three proprietors admitted breaching Health and Safety rules, Vince Page and Alan Tyler Regulations 8(a) and 12(4) and Blakeman only the former.
As a further warning to all businessmen responsible for the care of duty to their employees, not only were Quality Roofs Ltd fined £10,000 + £4,000 in costs but Alan Tyler was personally fined £20,000 + a further £4,000 in costs.
The building contractor, V. Page Building Services Ltd. were fined £20,000 + £8,000 costs whilst the scaffolder was fined £3,000 + £2,000 costs, totalling £53,000 in fines and £18,000 in costs, alone.
As soon as the Health and Safety Executive get involved, there is little use protesting your innocence – the rules are there; you have either observed them or not.
However, there are instances that are not so cut and dried. If you are struggling due to an accident at work, even if it occurred some time ago and you feel the need for guidance, many personal injury lawyers are free to contact and will take on your case on a no win no fee basis, if they feel there is strong enough evidence to make a case.
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One personal injury claim solicitor firm has recently spoken out in protest against the Legal Aid changes planned by the government, stating that the new rules will reduce access to justice for those who need it the most this year.
The solicitor firm has begun to urge its customers to waste no time in making claims for personal injury compensation while they can before the government can institute the new changes. Managing director for the firm, Rob Bhol, says that they will be raising public awareness of the new Legal Aid Bill ahead of Parliament passing it this coming spring.
The new bill will see many differences to no win no fee arrangements, such as an abolition of the practice of a successful solicitor being able to claim ‘success fees’ from losing defendants. This means that successful claimants will now need to pay their legal team from their compensation payments.
The planned changes will result in it becoming more cost-effective for defendants to hold out until their case goes to trial, legal experts say, which may result in less wealthy victims of accidents from seeking justice due to the extra financial strain put upon claimants. The changes proposed by the government are being made in an attempt to curb the rise of the so-called ‘compensation culture’ in the UK, though some experts say that the problem is one fabricated by insurance lobbyists, as only approximately one out of every four victims of an accident ever actually make a claim for compensation.
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One man was removed from the jury of a personal injury compensation case in the United States (proof positive that the UK does not have a monopoly on idiotic behaviour) after he attempted to add one of the case’s defendants to his Facebook friends list.
No, April Fool’s Day hasn’t come four months early this year, though personal injury compensation claim experts may wonder if Florida native Jacob Jock’s calendar is off a bit. The clueless Mr Jock assumed that it would be permissible to attempt to friend accident claim defendant Violetta Milerman on Facebook after he reported to jury duty and was placed in the jury pool for her lawsuit.
Judges warned members of the jury that they were not permitted to use the internet to learn any details of the trial, yet Mr Jock attempted to do so despite the warnings. The man, a small business owner trading as JJ Custom Screen Printing, then accidentally sent a friend request to Ms Milerman, which let the cat out of the bag – and saw him landing in hot water.
Mr Jock was summarily dismissed for ignoring the judge’s instructions, and then immediately posted a Facebook status update where he rejoiced his dismissal. Luckily for Mr Jock, he was not in a jurisdiction – such as Texas or the UK – where jurors found out to have engaged in similar behaviour have been sent to prison or sentenced to community service for their hubris.
Upon first stifling their laughter at Mr Jock’s ineptitude, legal experts issued the reminder that blatantly disregarding the specific instructions of a judge in any sort of legal proceeding is most likely one of the worst things you could possibly do whilst selected to serve as a member of a jury.
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A Newport personal injury claim solicitor firm has launched a new brand in the ‘American’ style with a strategy of aggressive growth, personal injury compensation experts have recently reported.
With a focus on medical negligence and personal injury claims, Hornby Baker Jons and Wood’s new brand, Victorious Claims, has £140,000 worth of investment capital behind it. The solicitor firm has spared no expense in establishing a strong identity for the brand, with the purchase of a minibus and three branded cars for regional roadshows and client home visits and featuring the three partners as the firm’s public face, and the solicitor firm also has plans to begin a recruitment drive for four additional staff members this year, bringing a total of 10 staff members under the Victorious banner.
The new brand is a glimpse of the ambitions HBJ&W has for its expansion over the next two years in the hopes that its business will grow an additional £1 million by 2013. Focused around an approachable and personalised service offering visits at home, the Victorious customer service model is based upon the American one, industry experts say.
Qualified staff handle all cases, ensuring clients are in receipt of the highest quality of client care and legal advice, said Andrew Collingbourne, managing partner for HBJ&W. The firm made the decision to focus on a brand with distinction in order to separate it from its core services, said Mr Collingbourne, adding that the goal was to send a message that drew attention to its focus on results and consumer service.
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A sixty four year old teacher has made a personal injury claim for an accident at an Aberdeen indoor go-kart circuit after one of her own pupils struck her in a pit lane.
Fraserburgh native Julie Markie has made a claim for personal injury compensation from Driveflight, a Glenrothes-based firm, stating that the injuries she sustained in the incident led to her having to retire from her position as a teacher. The former teacher, who now walks with the aid of a cane, was sustained her injuries whilst accompanying a group of pupils on a Peterhead Academy school trip.
According to papers filed in the court by Mrs Markie’s personal injury lawyers, the former teacher, who had taught classes in craft and design prior to the accident, had been checking on one of her young charges when he entered the pit area via an open gate. The sixty four year old was left with several injuries, such as on her left foot, which now bears a lengthy scar, leaving her with a limp, while she also suffered mild brain injuries and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Driveflight, trading under the name Kartstart, operates several indoor tracks including its Bridge of Don location, which is where the incident occurred. One of the longest running go-kart firms in the UK, Kartstart offers a wide selection of karts for all sizes, from powerful karts with twin engines to kiddie carts.
Driveflight declined an opportunity to comment on the case when approached by members of the press. However, court documents indicate that the defendants will be attempting to shift the blame on to the schoolboy who had been driving the kart at the time.
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Pot holes plaguing roads in Gwent have generated a massive volume of personal injury claims, with the five councils in the region paying out in excess of £190,000 in personal injury compensation over the past three years.
Torfaen, Newport, Monmouthshire, Caerphilly, and Blaenau Gwent councils have made compensation payments of £191,165.18 from 2008, according to a recent Freedom of Information request. Injury solicitors have been quite successful in bringing legal proceedings against the councils due to the pot holes that are littering the roads cared for by the local authorities.
The Gwent council paying out the most was found to be Monmouthshire council, as it paid out on 55 successful claims since 2008 to the tidy sum of £63,875. The costliest pot hole claim for the local authority saw them paying compensation of £15,732.
Newport council was also reported as spending a large quantity of cash on compensation payouts, as it the 75 successful claims against it rang up a bill of £51,878.29. The largest single compensation payout it had to make occurred during the 2009-2010 financial year, costing the council £4,000.
Councillor Matthew Evans, Newport city council leader, remarked that the local authority had taken an active approach to reduce the number of claims by both taking steps to increase fraud detection and also by implementing Project 21, a road improvement scheme. The council has started to see reductions in the number of compensation claims as a result, Mr Evans added.
However, not all the councils dealt with such costly problems. Blaenau Gwent council paid out on only 28 successful claims totaling a relatively paltry £3,466, with the single costliest claim being less than £300 for damage sustained to a car.
Strangely enough, the local authority admitted that its pot hole repair efforts were inundated with a backlog of reports that dated back an astounding 43 years.
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The death of a family’s infant son may lead to a medical negligence claim being made against the midwife-led unit of the University Hospital of Wales as concerns were raised about the unit’s quality of maternity care.
Noah Tyler suffered severe brain damage during his delivery this past February at the hospital unit, allegedly due to failings of hospital staff. The infant died recently, and now his parents, Hywel and Colleen Tyler, are prepared to pursue a personal injury compensation claim against the hospital on the basis of medical negligence.
According to a recent article appearing in the Western Mail newspaper, the incident led to the suspension of one midwife, who is now barred from practising without Nursing and Midwifery Council supervision. The 31 year old Mrs Tyler said that there were innumerable things that went awry during Noah’s birth, yet there was no one in attendance to rectify the situation, as the young child languished for hours with oxygen deprivation.
Hospital staff neglected to act in a timely manner when Mrs Tyler’s blood pressure rose to dangerous levels during Noah’s delivery, the bereaved mother said, recounting how she spent hours sitting on her hands in a birthing pool trying not to push only to be transferred to a bed in the unit and told to push for an additional hour. Young Noah emerged from his mother deathly pale, Mrs Tyler added, claiming that as they took him away no one said anything about it; in her exhausted state she lacked the ability to make any sort of fuss over the matter.
However, Noah’s father, Hywel, reported hearing cardiac massage being carried out on his newborn son, as he was not breathing and had to be taken up to neonatal intensive care after he was resuscitated and then put on a ventilator. A doctor then informed the new parents that Noah was in a very bad way, requiring a 72 hour wait until Mr and Mrs Tyler could touch their newborn son.
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With increasing attention paid by media outlets to personal injury compensation awards that have spiraled higher and higher in value, there are few in the UK that would dispute that the personal injury claims industry has exhibited strong growth over the past few years.
People who suffer injuries in an accident at work or on the road through no fault of their own are entitled to compensation for their pain and suffering. However, complexities in the legal process involved in making accident claims can sometimes require prospective claimants to seek advice from a legal professional with knowledge of how to navigate the sometimes murky waters of the personal injury claims world.
Individuals can suffer injuries in a wide range of incidents, though there are some which occur with more regularity than others. One of the most prevalent injuries which occur whilst behind the wheel are due to whiplash, which occur when claimants are struck from behind while in their vehicle, causing violent recoil to their neck from the impact.
Whiplash injuries can be quite debilitating, as the pain and discomfort left in the wake of such an injury can linger for months after the initial accident. Whiplash is an injury that is almost exclusively suffered by motorists through no fault of their own, as drivers must be struck from behind to achieve the sudden trauma to the neck that causes the condition, which means that the driver causing the accident is almost always considered to be liable by the courts.
Many Brits suffering from whiplash choose to seek legal advice from a professional in order to help them to receive compensation for their injuries. These professionals have extensive experience and knowledge in making such whiplash claims from insurers.
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by Personal Injury Claims
After being thrown from her mount and breaking her back, one horse rider has won her accident claim and has received a personal injury compensation award of £37,000, experts recently reported.
South Wales native Ceri Tonkinson, had been riding a newly ‘broken in’ horse when her mount was startled by Stephen Davies, a Penarth Downside Riding School employee, as he rode by on his own horse, personal injury claims experts writing for the South Wales Echo newspaper say. In an interview with the newspaper, Mrs Tonkinson had noticed her horse becoming unsettled, leading to her requesting Mr Davies to not overtake her, but the riding school employee disregarded her pleas, leading to her horse rearing up and throwing her to the ground.
The woman, who had been a competitive equestrian rider at high level events throughout the country, sustained injuries to her pelvis and back in the incident. While the fractures to both areas have healed, she can no longer ride for more than a short period of time, as she still suffers pain from her injuries.
Mrs Tonkinson made personal injury claims against both Penarth Downside Riding School and Mr Davies in Cardiff County Court, which led her to being awarded damages of £37,000. In the wake of the hearing, the former competitive rider remarked that both she and friends of hers had seen dangerous and inconsiderate riding by riders from Penarth Downside on several occasions previously, and as she was no longer in any mood to ‘put up with’ that sort of behaviour, she made the claim to put an end to the practices.
News Personal Injury Claims
by Personal Injury Claims
After a toddler from Wiltshire suffered personal injury in Tesco when he fell from a shopping trolley, his parents have been considering making injury claims against the supermarket giant for compensation.
According to a recent article in the Wiltshire Times newspaper, Swindon native Roman Herbert, eighteen months old, had been taken shopping at the Ocotal Way Tesco store by his father, Brad, and had been strapped in securely to his shopping trolley as usual just before the incident occurred. However, the trolley toppled over when one of its wheels came off, sending the young toddler tumbling to the ground, suffering bumps, bruises, and a swollen cheek that required immediate medical care at the scene.
As a result of young Roman’s injuries, his mother and father may now make a personal injury compensation claim against Tesco on the ground that the supermarket giant negligently failed to make sure its customers were safe. The boy’s father told the Wiltshire Times in an interview that one of his goals was to issue the warning to other parents that they need to check a shopping trolley very carefully before setting their children down in one.
According to a Tesco spokesperson’s statements, the supermarket giant had issued an apology to young Roman’s parents for any and all distressed the incident my have caused. Moreover, the store at Ocotal Way had carried out an inspection of all of their trolleys in order to prevent another unfortunate incident in the future.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
Around one out of every 3 Brits have suffered personal injury on a night out, new research findings reveal, with 70 per cent of those injured caused by drinking to excess.
Commissioned by a personal injury compensation specialist firm, the research highlights the dangers faced during the festive season by those who drink too much alcohol. The survey discovered that it was most common to become injured by falling over whilst outside, though there were certain differences between injuries sustained by men and those by women.
Women seem to be much more clumsy than men, with 25 per cent likely to injure themselves inside bars and clubs, while only 16 per cent of men reported the same. However, men were considered to be exceedingly belligerent whilst drunk, as 16.3 per cent reported becoming injured after getting themselves into a fight, compared to just 1.7 per cent of women.
The personal injury lawyers who commissioned the survey found other causes of injury, such as 1.5 per cent getting themselves run over, 3.5 per cent burning themselves on a lit cigarette, and 4 per cent injuring themselves whilst drunkenly trying to jump over an obstacle such as a road barrier. Other injuries included falling down flights of stairs in bars and nightclubs, reported 8.5 per cent of the time, while 10.5 per cent of drunken revelers cut themselves on broken glass – sometimes quite seriously.
Younger Brits were found to be much more accident-prone, with 54 per cent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 becoming injuries on a night out, while 41 per cent of those between the ages of 25 and 34 suffered the same fate. Alcohol was to blame for the lion’s share of injuries in several cities, including 71 per cent in Birmingham and Manchester, 72 per cent in London, 76 per cent in Nottingham, 77 per cent in Leeds, and an eye-watering 88 per cent in Liverpool.
News Personal Injury
by Personal Injury Claims
One man from South Yorkshire who made a claim against his former employer for an accident at work was recenly awarded a massive personal injury compensation payout, with the presiding High Court Judge praising his bravery in the face of his serious disabilities from the accident.
Fifty seven year old Christopher Gerald Kaye, sustained life-threatening injuries to his head after being struck in the face by a piece of heavy machinery in October of 2008 at a Sheffield construction site, according to the man’s personal injury claims. The industrial accident left Mr Kaye, a Barnsley native, with catastrophic brain damage, leaving him dependent on twenty four hour a day care for the rest of his natural life.
However, Mr Kaye and his family decided to make a compensation claim against Euro Dismantling Services Ltd, the man’s former employer. In the wake of the claim, the fifty seven year old has won a massive compensation payout in the millions of pounds in a settlement, experts say.
Mr Kay had demonstrated an ‘outstanding’ amount of courage in the years following his life-altering accident, Mr Justice Popplewell stated as he approved the settlement in the High Court of London. The judge remarked that the compensation amount was in the injured man’s best interests and was decidedly fair.
Mr Justice Popplewell remarked that he had hopes that the settlement will be put to good use not just for Mr Kaye, but for his wife of 32 years, Susan, who has shown tireless and exceptional devotion to her husband. The rest of the Kaye family should be commended for pitching in to aid the injured man through a very difficult time, the judge also said.
News Personal Injury Claims