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If you have been unfortunate enough to have been involved in an accident with an uninsured or untraced driver (i.e. the driver fled the scene without leaving their details), then you may still be entitled to claim for compensation through an organisation known as The Motor Insurers Bureau (or MIB for short).
To not be able to claim for an injury caused by a road accident that was not your fault would simply be unfair and unjust; hence why The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) was set up in order to deal with uninsured and untraced claims. The MIB also deal with hit and run cases under its untraced agreement.
The MIB is funded by motor insurance companies and helps around 25,000 people per year make a claim. The fact that it is funded by the insurance companies means that, ultimately, they are funded by us and our insurance premiums – the MIB have calculated this cost to be around £15 – £30 per policy a year.
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Tripping claims are one of the most common types of claim that we see here at The Injury Lawyers. If you have tripped over due to the negligence of another, and you have been injured as a result, you may have a claim for compensation.
I have listed below some of the more common types of tripping claims that we see here at The Injury Lawyers:
Tripping over on the street on defective paving or raised/unsecured manhole covers – in this instance it is likely that your claim will either be against local council, a gas or electricity company or a water board. With these types of claims it is advisable to instruct a specialist personal injury lawyer with experience in handling claims against the Council. This is because claiming against the Council can be difficult as their duty only extends to regularly inspecting and maintaining the land for which they are responsible. Therefore, if they can prove they have kept up with their inspection and maintenance policies, they can easily defend a claim.
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If you have had an accident in an evening out venue that was not your fault, and you suffered injury as a result, you may have a claim for compensation.
There are a number of ways an accident can occur in a venue – I have listed some of the more common types of accidents below:
- Slipping on a spillage that was negligently left uncleaned.
- Tripping on an item negligently left in a walkway.
- Getting shards of broken glass stuck in your foot.
- Accidents arising from the venue being overcrowded and over capacity.
What is third party capture?
I realise that some of you reading this blog may have heard of this term, but many people do not know what we mean by ‘Third Party Capture’. In short it is where a third party insurer deals directly with the victim of their insured’s negligence in order for them to come to an agreement over compensation between themselves, without an independent legal representative. In most scenarios the injuries will have been sustained in a road traffic accident, but equally they could have occurred out of another type of accident, for instance an accident at work.
Is this a problem?
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Compensation is also called ‘damages’ and there are two heads of damages for which you can claim – these are general damages and special damages, both of which I will go on to explain below.
General Damages
General damages is compensation which you can claim for the injuries you sustained as a result of your accident. In essence, you are claiming for:
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You need not be in a manual job to do manual tasks. Manual handling tasks can be delegated to you whatever role you hold in an organisation – for example you may be a receptionist who has been asked to move heavy boxes of files, or an administrative assistant moving deliveries of office supplies. Whatever the role you have your employer has a duty to protect you from risks to your health and safety.
Employer’s Duty
The duty of employers with regard to manual handling is enshrined within the Manual Handling Operations Regulations Act 1992 (amended in 2002). Going in depth into this legislation would take up this entire blog plus some, but the main point which can be taken from it are a hierarchy of control measures which an employer should follow when delegating manual handling tasks.
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Genuine No Win, No Fee Agreement
At The Injury Lawyers we recover our legal fees from the other side directly if we win your case. If we obtain compensation for you, like we have in thousands of other personal injury cases for our numerous clients, like them, you will get to keep 100% of the compensation you are due. So, if you are awarded £2,000 for your whiplash injury, you keep the full £2,000. There are absolutely no reductions on your compensation made by us.
Sounds great – but there must be some kind of catch, right?
No! Even if you lose the claim, which is unlikely because we only ever take on claims we genuinely believe will be successful, we do not charge you a penny. This is because at the beginning of your compensation claim we take out an After the Event Insurance policy which covers some of our costs should your case be unsuccessful – this way we can recoup some of our losses. And when we win, we can recover our costs from the other side directly. You will not have to worry about facing a hefty lawyers bill.
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Britain’s ‘Compensation Culture’ in the News
OK – so there is this whole thing about a ‘compensation culture’ in the UK that has hit the headlines on numerous occasions. In reality, if you read the Lord Young / Jackson reports of late, the whole idea of a ‘compensation culture’ was deemed a media fuelled myth, of which there really is no issue.
The most recent headlines have been those of our former justice secretary Jack Straw whom, after investigating how one of his constituents details were sold around for money between claims companies and insurers to solicitors, hit out at the frivolous profit making industry of personal injury referral fees; something which we never pay and have always been against.
The insurers themselves were blamed for the increase in our car premiums as it was uncovered that it was the insurers themselves that are a party to the referral fee system, in which their own policy holder’s details are passed over to solicitors who are willing to pay huge referral fees of up to £1000 per claim. This has, according to recent news, been responsible for an increase in ‘frivolous’ claims that have not only driven our premiums up, but provided the insurers with a millions of pounds in profit from passing the details of accident victims over.
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Making a Claim for Whiplash – the Process Explained.
At The Injury Lawyers we tend to see whiplash most commonly from a road traffic accident – so, in this blog, I will be explaining the process of claiming for the same. Whiplash can be caused by a variety of accidents and not simply by a road traffic accident; so if this is the case with you, please see one of our other helpful blogs on that process – a good blog to take a look at is http://www.theinjurylawyers.co.uk/injury-lawyers-blog/2011/07/08/a-quick-guide-to-the-compensation-claiming-process/.
The Process…
If your road traffic accident occurred after 30th April 2010 and is below the value of £10,000 it goes through a new, faster, more streamlined system set up by the Ministry of Justice. This system is begun by completing a form called a Claim Notification Form. At The Injury Lawyers we take you through the form and assist you from start to finish in filling it in. Once this form has been signed by you, we can then send it off to the Defendant’s insurers.
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If you have been injured in a road traffic accident and it was through no fault of your own, you may have a claim for compensation. If you are reading this blog you are likely to be in this situation and looking for a personal injury firm to take on your claim.
Choosing the right law firm for your claim…
There are many law firms and referral agencies out there vying for your business, so it is understandably hard to make that all important choice as to where to take your claim. I have therefore set out below some benefits which you should look out for when choosing a law firm to instruct for your claim:
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