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You might have been told that you can claim for losses that result from your accident as well as claiming injury compensation – which is absolutely right.  But you might not have been told what the difference between General Damages (the compensation for your injuries) and Special Damages is.  At The Injury Lawyers we like to keep our advice simple and speak in plain language; so here’s a quick guide to Special Damages.

If you have been injured through no fault of your own, you can claim compensation.  The compensation you get for your injuries alone is called General Damages.  So you have whiplash, and you make a claim and get £1,500.00 for your injuries.  This is your general damages.  Ok, but did you know that you can also be get compensation for any other losses that come from your accident as well?  You can, and these are called Special Damages.  This is compensation for your financial losses.

What exactly are Special Damages?
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Our name is a bit of a giveaway about what we specialise in; as The Injury Lawyers, we represent clients for personal injury cases, and nothing else! Because we specialise in all forms of injury claims, we think we’re the best choice for any sort of claim – whether it’s a straightforward soft tissue injury, to broken bones and severe trauma injuries.

If you are unfortunate enough to be suffering with a severe injury, you will probably be considering the avenue of making a claim a little more carefully – ultimately, your claim could be worth a lot of money, which means two things – 1. You want to make sure you get 100% of the maximum amount you are entitled to claim for; and 2. The insurers for the other side will not want to pay you a huge sum of compensation as it costs them a lot of money – they are far more likely to try and defend your claim and reduce your payout by any means they possibly can.

What I’m saying here is that if you have suffered a serious injury, you need, and I mean NEED, a specialist personal injury lawyer representing you for your claim to make sure you miss out on nothing. So, here is a guide as to what you should look for in your injury lawyer:
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One of the more common questions we get asked is whether someone has a claim for compensation – in other words, are they likely to actually win the claim and receive some compensation. 

Naturally some claims are harder to assess than others, but probably the easiest claim to assess is a passenger injury claim. That’s where you have been involved in a car crash and you are either the passenger in the vehicle which has been hit by the Defendant or the passenger in the vehicle which caused the accident.

You have a great claim, because unless you did something highly unusual, like pull the handbrake or severely distract the driver, it is highly unlikely that you were at fault for the accident and therefore you can be compensated for any injuries suffered.
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A lot of people who suffer debilitating injuries in an accident that was caused through no fault of their own end up losing earnings from time off of work. It’s one of the most common classes of financial losses that’s involved in a claim for compensation. Many people only receive statutory sick pay when they are off work for long periods of time; if you are lucky enough to have a company sick pay that pays you in full, this may not apply to you too much – but if it’s only a partial pay, then read on!

Anyone who loses out on earnings through being unable to work is entitled to make a claim for this loss that forms as part of their overall compensation claim. Your claim comes in to two parts – General Damages, and Special Damages. General Damages covers the injury itself, and Special Damages covers the financial loses, to which lost earnings are a part of.

Its normally pretty easy to work it out as well – if you have two weeks off of work and you are paid absolutely nothing, you are entitled to claim two weeks work of full earnings back. If you were paid Statutory Sick Pay, then you claim back the difference between that and the lost earnings. If you receive half pay through a company sick pay policy, than you claim back the other lost half as part of the claim.
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If you ever find yourself injured in an accident as a consequence of someone’s negligence, leaving you distressed and at harm either from a physical or psychological injury, it is only justifiable to ensure that you are well compensated as a result of this injury for your pain suffering, and loss of amenity.

With this in mind then, it is important to understand that it is not possible to seek compensation directly from an individual who caused the accident as, from a financial perspective, they would certainly struggle to compensate you properly. Therefore the preferable route would be to seek damages against their employer as chances are they will posses adequate insurance for you to claim from.

Having said this, in order for a case of vicarious liability to be successfully brought a distinction must be made between what qualifies an individual to being under a ‘contract of employment’ and under a ‘contract for services’.
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Believe it or not the amount of accident which arise on or about stairwells are consistently increasing with each passing year. In light of this it is important to understand then that if you are ever so unfortunate as to suffer an injury on a flight of stairs and you are adamant that the accident occurred as a direct result of another parties negligence, you may have every right to bring a successful claim and as such recover adequate compensation for your injuries.

It is imperative to understand that the nature surrounding potential avenues to claim under defected stairwells are numerous. Let’s take the workplace for a predominant example. Under these circumstances the employer of any business which hires employees are under a direct legal obligation to ensure that any staircases within their establishment are compliant with all the necessary health and safety checks to ensure that they are adequately protected from any potential legal repercussion.

Such health and safety include providing an assurance that all staircases well lighted particularly in areas which are mostly susceptible to visual difficulty in addition to making sure that appropriate handrails are provided for ease of climbing and support. It is also worth mentioning that employers must carry out consistent checks to ensure that the stairwells are always safe for usage, it is not enough to test them once and believe that that is enough.
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When we hear the word whiplash, most of us think of a road accident involving the collision of vehicles.  It is true that whiplash is the most common type of injury caused from a road traffic accidents; however, this is not always the case. This type of injury can also be common in contact sports such as rugby and boxing, or from a slip or trip resulting in a fall.

What is whiplash? 

It is commonly soft tissue damage in the neck, back and shoulder areas; the head may jolt quickly backward and forwards, or sideways.  This sudden jolting motion causes damages to the ligaments and tendons.  We cannot always protect ourselves from incidents such as this, but if they happen, especially when it’s through no fault of our own, it can be very stressful and inconvenient.
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The point of making a claim for personal injury compensation is to firstly award you with compensation for the pain, suffering, inconvenience, and loss of amenity that you endure as a result of your physical and / or mental injuries. However, on top of this, you are entitled to claim for what’s known as Special Damages.

Special Damages are made up of financial losses that you or even others affected by the claim incur. The common ones are things such as lost earnings from being off of work, medical expenses for treatment or prescription / over the counter medication you have to buy, travel expenses, and another key item called Care and Assistance.

Anyone is entitled to make a care and assistance claim, so long as it can be justified. Care and assistance is for any person making a claim who has to rely upon anyone else to look after themselves. This type of thing is common in serious injury claims, or cases where a debilitating injury has been sustained – such as any limb disability from, say, a broken leg, or dislocated arm, etc. Naturally, these types of injuries usually result in serious mobility impairment – everyday tasks can become a struggle, or even nigh impossible, in some circumstances.

What Can Care and Assistance Cover?
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As of April 2010, claiming for compensation for whiplash caused by a straightforward road traffic accident just got a whole lot easier.  A new process was introduced which has cut drastically the length of time a claim takes to settle. 

Under the old system you could be waiting nearly 4 months just simply for an admission of liability from the negligent third party, and then you would still have to go about obtaining medical evidence and enter into negotiations with the other side to see if a settlement could be reached.  Nowadays, an admission of liability can be received within a couple of weeks and your claim settled in a couple of months!

The first stage in this new claiming process is to submit a Claim Notification Form.  This a simple form that you can go through with an expert injury lawyer on your side which details your accident, those involved in your accident, and the injuries you suffered from.  The form itself takes about 15-20 minutes to complete, and once you are happy with it, it is submitted to the Defendant’s insurer who has just 1 business day to acknowledge it. 
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If you’re asking this question, your solicitor may not have explained the difference between General Damages and Special Damages, or mentioned recoverable losses, or what makes up a claim for compensation.

Don’t worry – our team here at The Injury Lawyers are always on hand to advise you! Here is a guide of all that you need to know:

How is My Compensation Valued?
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