Common Personal Injury Claim Myths

There seems to be a lot of confusion and misunderstandings when it comes to personal injury claims. At Nelsons, our expert Personal Injury team regularly hears concerns and receives questions from individuals, with many of them surprised by what the law actually has to say.

Common personal injury claim myths

Making a personal injury claim is expensive – I can’t afford it!

At Nelsons, we can look at your personal circumstances and the circumstances surrounding your accident and advise you on the best method of funding a compensation claim. If you can’t afford to pay privately, there are other options, such as:

• If you are a member of a Trade Union, it may provide legal expenses cover which would pay for the services of a solicitor to conduct a claim on your behalf.
• You may have legal expenses cover on a household contents insurance policy.
• Nelsons may be able to offer you a no-win, no-fee funding arrangement.

If I have an accident at work, can I claim on my employer’s insurance policy?

If you have an accident at work, you still have to prove that your employer has been negligent in some way. For example, your employer may have failed to provide you with a safe system of work, or a safe workplace or may have failed to provide you with the correct PPE to keep you safe at work.

It is not the case that you can simply make a claim on your employer’s insurance policy without proving your employer has done something wrong.

My friend had a claim and it was settled within two months. Will my claim settle as quickly?

Some cases can settle within a few months but most cases take longer than this to resolve. It very much depends on the type of claim, the attitude of the defendant, and whether they admit liability quickly or not. Even then, it may be some time before your injuries have resolved or you have completed treatment and your claim cannot be reliably settled before then.

The defendant may dispute the value of your claim, even if they have admitted a breach of duty and they may dispute the cause of your ongoing symptoms. It can often take 18 months or more before your claim is resolved.

I have got plenty of time to make a claim.

Under the Limitation Act 1980, there is generally a three-year time limit to make a personal injury claim. If Court proceedings are not issued before the expiry of this limitation period, then it will become statute-barred, which means that you will be unable to pursue the claim any further.

The limitation period for a personal injury claim will either start:

There are certain exceptions to the time limits in personal injury claims. These exceptions are generally when a child is involved, an adult who lacks mental capacity, or where the victim has sadly died.

If I prove the defendant was at fault, can I claim all of my losses back?

A claimant is under a duty to mitigate his/her losses and can only claim back those losses which can be attributed to the accident and which are reasonable. So, for example, if you take taxis everywhere after your accident when it was reasonable for you to have taken the bus, you will only recover your bus fares, not the taxi fares. The Court will decide which expenses were reasonable for you to incur.

In addition, even if the defendant was at fault, if you were partly to blame for your accident then the Court will reduce your damages by the same percentage. If the Court finds that you were 25% to blame for your injuries, then the defendant will only have to pay you 75% of the value of your claim.