What are reasonable losses?

What are reasonable losses?

If you have been involved in an accident that was not your fault, you may be entitled to a claim for compensation.  Together with this, you may be entitled to claim for any financial losses you have suffered as a result of your accident. This is because compensation is meant to put you back in the position you would have been in (as far as reasonably possible) had you not suffered from the accident. This makes good and fair sense – why should you be the one to suffer and be out of pocket due to the negligence of another?

Our team at The Injury Lawyers will fight tooth and nail to get all of your financial losses back for you – there is, however, a duty to which you must adhere to as well – to mitigate your losses. By this, I mean to keep your losses to a minimum where possible. A good example of this is for a loss of earnings claim. A loss of earnings can be claimed if you have been absent from work due to your accident, and have been left unpaid, or receiving a reduced pay, such as Statutory Sick Pay. However, in order to mitigate your losses, once you are able to begin work again, or even begin work on lighter duties, you should start work immediately.

If you fail to mitigate your losses, the other side can refuse to pay you for it. With the example as set out above, they could not refuse to pay for all your loss of earnings, but only for the proportion that you incurred whilst you were unable to work. Hence, it is crucial that you make the effort to keep your losses to a minimum.

So we can see that a loss of earnings is a reasonable loss to claim for, but that the effort has to be made to keep this loss to a minimum. There are many losses which are reasonable to claim for – some of which I have gone on to list below:

• Treatment costs – this must have come as a result of your accident, and can include past and future treatment costs.
• Care and Assistance – if you have required the assistance of a carer in tasks such as household chores, or personal care tasks,
  then the carer’s time can be claimed back at an hourly rate. The amount of time you declare must be reasonable in view of your injuries, and be supported by your medical report.
• Travel costs – this can include travel to medical appointments – but again the cost must be reasonable.

If you need any further information regarding recouping your losses, please feel free to give us a call.