CAR ACCIDENT COMPENSATION ADVICE UK
Legal Claim UK is a national network of specialist personal injury solicitors operating nationwide throughout the United Kingdom who offer free car accident compensation advice. If you have been injured in an accident within the last three years that wasn’t your fault you should contact us. You will receive a complete professional service from lawyers who specialise in claiming damages for personal injury.
Obtaining damages for personal injury can be a daunting task
especially if you’re not familiar with the procedures. If you have suffered a personal
injury in an accident within the last three years that was not your fault you can usually
make a claim from against the other driver involved. Most drivers are insured and a claim
is effectively made against the insurers however a significant percentage of drivers are
uninsured and in these cases a claim must be made to the ‘Motor Insurers Bureau’ (MIB)
which is a fund set up to compensate the victims of uninsured or untraced drivers. The MIB
has complex technical rules and these cases should always be supervised by a solicitor to
ensure that the opportunity to claim is not lost due to an inadvertent breach of the MIB
rules.
To claim damages you need to be able to prove that the collision was not your fault and that someone else was responsible. That means that it is
necessary to prove negligence. In simple terms negligence is a failure to take reasonable
care for the safety of others. Even if a driver is partly to blame it is
still possible to claim against the other party using the doctrine of ‘contributory
negligence’. This means that if the accident was 30% your fault, then any damages that
would otherwise have been paid by the other driver’s insurers on a full liability basis
are reduced by 30%. This type of arrangement does of course open the door for the other
driver to claim 30% of his full liability damages against your insurers.
Certain classes of claimant can never be held to contribute including
passengers who will always recover damages in full not withstanding that it may have been
their own driver who was at fault. One spouse will often be able to claim car accident compensation against their
husband or wife if they are injured in an accident caused by their driver’s negligence.
Degrees of family relationship are irrelevant when considering compensation for
negligence.
Notwithstanding that car accident compensation claims are commonplace there are large numbers of
solicitors who deal with them as only part of their workload and could not by any stretch
of the imagination be said to be experts. Our solicitors deal exclusively in accident claims
involving personal injury and many of them deal only in road traffic claims.
Whilst almost any firm of solicitors will take on one of these claims it might no be your
best bet to use someone who is not engaged in this work full time. We can guarantee you
that your case will be handled by a specialist who is a member of the Law Society panel of
personal injury experts and is also a member of The Association of Personal Injury
Lawyers. Our solicitors all have a track record of many years’ successful claims
settlements and your case will be in safe experienced hands.
Compensation that can be claimed is divided into two categories;
Special Damages represents compensation for items that can be calculated accurately and includes lost wages, medical expenses, damaged property and general expenses.
General Damages represents compensation for items that in the main must be assessed by a Judge and include pain and suffering for the injury, damages for loss of a desirable life style and loss of opportunity on the open labour market in the future.
The assessment of damages for pain and suffering is a matter of great difficulty. Money can never adequately compensate for physical injury however Judges use the wisdom of previously decided cases and are guided by a publication from 'The Judicial Studies Board' which sets of the basic figures applicable for various types of injury. Awards made by Judges may also be subject to appeal to a higher court if one party finds the award unsatisfactory.
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