Personal Accident Help

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Compensation

If you have been involved in a personal accident within the last three years then you could be entitled to compensation, as long as you are not wholly at fault. If you need help with your claim then you should either contact a personal injury solicitor or your insurance company in the event that you have legal cover as part of your policy.

Regardless of the type of accident that you have suffered, whether it is on the road, at work, at home, in the hospital or on the street you are entitled to compensation provided that there is a duty of care owed. For example, motorists have a duty of care towards each other, employers towards their employees and so on. Any negligence or breach of this duty of care, leading to a personal accident, could lead to a compensation claim which is usually paid out by the requisite insurance companies (e.g. motor insurance, employer’s liability insurance etc). Continue reading →

The business of personal injury claims

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Just a short post about an aspect of personal injury and compensation claims not much talked about.

There will be legislation in force next year to seek to reign in the excesses of the personal injury market, which has frankly gone out of control, and yet, as is clear from the first wave of ABS (Alternative business Structure) investments into law firms, it’s the personal injury practices that are proving the most attractive investments.

there are some compelling business reasons why, notwithstanding the future threat to the market, injury law practices are still an attractive option for non-lawyer investors. These reasons include :-

  • Personal injury law firms are already run more like businesses than law firms
  • the management of personal injury law firms is often better than general practices
  • personal injury practices understand the importance of investing in sales and marketing
  • barriers to entry

It’s the last of the above short list which prompted this post. The barriers to entry for a general practice are now very high. Not only do most injury practices have established relationships with referral sources (although payment for referrals will be banned next year, referrals will undoubtedly still continue) but the main point is you need hard cash, and quite a lot of it, to get a personal injury practice started.

Not only do you need the staff and infrastructure, and a hefty marketing budget to compete, but because almost all personal injury claimant cases are dealt with on a no win no fee basis, the solicitors need excellent funding and cashflow to be able to pay out for medical reports, courts fees, after the vent insurance policies and to be able to wait for cases to turn into hard cash. this is a huge barrier to entry now, especially given that loan funding for such cases is now severely constrained.

The barrier to entry point is in our view one of the fundamental reasons why investment is flowing in, and the fact that, with the new reforms making a smaller elite group of firms more likely, size will matter, and the time to gear up is now.

What are your thoughts on the above ?

 

 

 

 

Data Protection and Personal Injury Claims

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Personal Injury Claim based on data protection breach

In a fascinating case reported this week a vulnerable individual with a pre-existing mental health conditions has based a personal injury claim successfully under section 13 of the Data Protection Act.It may be that other such claims are made, but few have reached the stage of a court hearing and consequently been publicised.

The case related to unlawful disclosure of the individual’s medical records by Plymouth Hospital NHS Trust, some time around December 2007. What happened was that the individual’s girlfriend worked for the Trust and unlawfully had a look at his records. The complainant discovered this and it exacerbated his pre-existing paranoid personality disorder. This in turn resulted in the complaint being unfit for employment at a time when he was on the verge of going back to work.

 At Plymouth County Court the Judge awarded the claimant £12,500.00 general damages for pain and suffering together with the sum of £4,800.00 representing loss of earnings. this loss of earning claim could potentially have been a lot higher and is often a larger part of a damages award than general damages. In this case, the claimant had only been offered a fixed term contract of 6 months at the time his condition deteriorated again, and he already had a pre-existing condition. As against this, the general rule with personal injury claims, known as the “egg shell; skull rule” is that the liable party must tale the victim as they are found such that if the victim has a pre-existing frailty this does not avoid liability.

Data protection breaches are becoming an increasing issue for employers of all sizes – combine the potential liabilities which do not relate to personal injury with personal injury claims and employers should be extra vigilant about Data Protection risks.