Most fractures can be tough to live with when you’re in the initial periods – but most people accept that fractures from the waist down can be the hardest to recover from given the severe affects it can have on your mobility.
For this article, we’ll discuss pelvic fracture compensation claims – what you can claim for, what kind of payouts you can expect, and what you should do when it comes to seeking legal representation.
What can be claimed for?
The most serious of pelvic fracture injuries are seen in law as potentially as bad as a lower limb amputations. Pelvic fractures can lead to significant surgery, months of rehabilitation, and months off work – all from being unable to mobilise properly. Some can lead to serious life altering disability.
When you make a claim for personal injury compensation, you can claim for the pain, suffering and loss of amenity caused, which is known as General Damages. We value this by sending you to see a medical expert who will provide us with a specialist report that outlines the extent and severity of your suffering.
On top of that, we can claim for what we call Special Damages which covers your consequential losses and expenses; such as lost earnings, private medical care, and medication costs.
A really important one in cases like this can be Care and Assistance, where we can claim back an hourly rate for any help you have received from friends and family. If, for example, your partner needs to help you with dressing, washing, cleaning, cooking, shopping – absolutely everything due to the fact you can’t move around properly – we can claim for elements of this on an hourly rate basis.
This can end up forming a significant part of the claim.
What amount of compensation can I expect?
It really is all down to the medical evidence and having a quality lawyer working on the case. But what I can do is outline some of the official guidelines for you so you can try and think of a very rough estimate that could in theory apply to your circumstances.
Moderate Injuries
Using the categories we have for pelvic and hip injury claims, where surgery is required and ongoing symptoms are slight, the bracket ranges are between £9,000 and £19,000.
In more significant cases where the future risks are slight and not seen as major, the payout ranges can move up from £19,000 – £28,000.
As you can see, even what we call the ‘moderate’ cases can attract high awards given the general seriousness of a pelvic fracture injury.
Severe Pelvic Injuries
A lot of claims fall within these brackets. For the first section, the following can be applicable:
- A fracture of the acetabulum leading to degenerative changes and leg instability requiring an osteotomy
- Likelihood of future hip replacement surgery
- Fracture resulting in a hip replacement which is only partially successful, leaving a clear risk of the need for revision surgery
In this bracket, payouts are likely to fall within the range of £28,000 – £37,500.
In more serious cases where there is a fracture dislocation of the pelvis involving both ischial and pubic rami and resulting in impotence, the payout bracket is set understandably higher at £44,200 to £56,000.
In the most severe of cases, where there are extensive fractures of the pelvis involving the dislocation of a low back joint and ruptured bladder, or consequential hip injury, or spondylolisthesis requiring spinal fusion surgery, we hit the top end of the bracket ranges.
Additional factors considered are things like substantial ongoing disability, lack of bladder and bowel control, sexual dysfunction, and / or hip deformity.
The bracket for these top end injuries is £56,000 to £93,500.
What you should do
As you can tell from the payout ranges, pelvic fracture injuries are serious – if you’re suffering from one, I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here. The above brackets are just for the injury alone, and you can of course seek additional compensation for losses and expenses briefly mentioned earlier.
Is it absolutely ESSENTIAL that you instruct a specialist injury law firm like us to represent you for the claim. There are a lot of lawyers out there, and many of them are not specialist injury solicitors like we are. We know what we’re doing, and we know how to get the best possible medical care and best possible payout for the case.
Never leave it to chance when it comes to a pelvic fracture compensation claim – call us now on 0800 634 75 75 for specialist advice.
