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By this, I’m talking about where an insurer approaches you directly to settle a claim, but you are wise enough to get a lawyer and make a claim the proper way. If you do this, could you end up with less compensation with the lawyer?

It’s never guaranteed whether the pre-medical offer could be beaten, but here are the facts surrounding pre-medical offers based on industry knowledge and our clients own experiences…

Why make a low offer?

Pre-medical offers are offers made by insurers to save themselves money. An insurance company’s duty is to their shareholders – that’s to maximise profits to maintain their shareholders return on investment. To do this, they need to save money; and to save money, they need to pay out as little as possible to accident victims. So don’t let them fool you in to thinking that they are doing this to get you a quick settlement right away.
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I’m going to write in parts to this article – one from the perspective of a trainee or new employee having an accident, and the other from the perspective of someone injured by a trainee or new employer at work!

You Start Work

So you start your new job and you are being trained up in how to be as efficient as possible for the company. There are lots of things you need to learn and health and safety is an issue that needs to be in the forefront of both your mind and your employers. When you are in a new environment, you may lack the skills necessary to understand certain risks. For ease of example, we’ll use a building site:
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Just so you know, the reason I’m writing about skidding accidents is because I’m rather confused – it’s a summer evening here in our midlands based office and for reasons that just don’t seem to make sense, its hailing! In the middle of summer!  Our weather seems to have gone crazy in recent years, and hail in the middle of summer just doesn’t make sense.

Its heavy, and the roads are pretty waterlogged, so driving conditions are dangerous in places. As such, we all need to adapt as drivers to the conditions we are driving in – so in periods of wet weather when the road is slippery, we need to take extra care. This means slowing down and increasing the distances between vehicles.

So what happens if a car skids and causes an accident? What if traffic suddenly slowed and a driver brakes but loses their grip due to the road conditions and crashes in to another vehicle? Is it just one of those things? Can you blame someone for the weather? Well a driver cannot normally use the excuse that the road was wet as a defence to the claim – the Highway Code states that you have to keep a greater distance in slippery conditions.
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£1,000? £3,000? £10,000? £50,000? – it’s not a very easy question to answer on the face value of things.

The way your claim is valued is by a suitable expert providing a medico-legal report which is then used to value the claim in line with official Judicial Council guidelines and the experience of your lawyer. The severity and longevity of your whiplash injury usually dictates the valuation of the claim.

Generally speaking, the more you suffer, the more we get for you.

I can tell you that the average minor whiplash claim settles for around £2,500, and most people will fall within the minor whiplash category. The official brackets are roughly £1,000 to £5,000.
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Forklift trucks are widely used in a lot of industries. Given how common they are, accidents at work involving forklift trucks are fairly common. So if you are at work and you have been injured in a forklift truck accident, are you entitled to make a claim for personal injury compensation? Here’s some advice:

Can You Claim?

Whether you can claim or not is down to the individual circumstances of your accident. Common examples where you may have a claim could be:
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If you are involved in an accident as a passenger, and a collision took place, you generally should have a successful claim. As a passenger, unless you did something reckless like pulled the handbrake or distracted the driver or had some kind of impact on the accident, you shouldn’t be at fault. If one car hits another and you are a passenger in either of the vehicle, you should be able to make a claim.

The reason why I highlight the point of there being a collision is that, for a collision to take place, someone must have been at fault in the vast majority of circumstances. If there isn’t a collision, say you are a passenger on a bus and the bus suddenly stops, then you may not have such a strong case. It all depends on the reason as to why the bus stopped. If it stopped because another driver negligently pulled out of a side road, then it isn’t really the fault of the bus. If the other driver can’t be traced, it could be difficult to claim against them directly.
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If you have an accident at work and it wasn’t your fault, you may have a claim for compensation against your employer. All employers have a legal duty to have a policy of employer’s liability insurance that covers them for claims being made against them. The insurance is there to be claimed from.

But what happens if you are at work and you are injured by one of your colleagues? What happens if you are lifting a heavy item and your colleague drops it because they weren’t paying enough attention? Or what happens if your colleague accidentally drives in to you with a forklift truck? Or what about if they switch a machine on whilst you are cleaning it?

Who is to blame?

Well the colleague is generally at fault if you look at it from a literal perspective if they were the negligent one, but in the eyes of the law you may be able to claim against your employer for compensation. It’s called vicarious liability, and it generally means, in a workplace scenario, that the negligence of a colleague falls on to your employer.
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According to official Judicial Council Guidelines that are used to assess claims, examples of severe ankle injuries include:

• Transmalleolar fractures which often come with severe soft tissue injuries in the surrounding area as well.
• Bilateral ankle fractures which can lead to degeneration of the joints.
• Injuries that require an extensive periods of treatment and rehabilitation, with operations involving pins and plates being inserted.
• Any injury causing a form of residual ankle instability or disability.
• Any injury that results in significant scarring or has any affect on your employment or quality of life – perhaps due to a requirement to wear special footwear.

These sorts of injuries could result in below-knee amputations or the event of a future injury, or arthrodesis, which is an artificial joint inserted in to the foot, being required. Or, as already mentioned above, the requirement to use a splint or some kind of orthotic device or specialist footwear to help you walk properly.
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Any knee injury can be extremely painful and potentially debilitating. As the main joints that are helping us to remain upright and walk around, walking with pain in the knee or restricted movement can have significant affects on both your work and domestic life.

So here is some advice about making a claim for minor to moderate knee injury compensation – what you should do, how to claim with us, how we can help you out, and roughly what you might be looking at payment-wise.

Medical Attention

Firstly, we are specialist injury lawyers and not medical experts – so any advice about the medical side of things is for general guidance only. You should see your GP or go to a walk in centre or hospital as soon as possible to get the treatment you need. Knee injuries, especially if you are having trouble weight bearing, could be serious. It may be prudent to have an x-ray or be seen by an orthopaedic expert to assess if there is anything that needs urgent attention.
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At The Injury Lawyers, we specialise in most claims for personal injury. We have a dedicated team that assists victims of cosmetic surgery claims, and with the rise in the amount of people having cosmetic surgery nowadays, and given how poorly regulated the industry can be, cosmetic claims are rife!

The PIP breast implant scandal is still fresh in our minds, and we are dealing with hundreds of cases against varying clinics and credit providers. For many it has been an uphill struggle as clinics have selfishly liquidated themselves in order to avoid paying out for a claim.
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