Serious injuries can occur in many different places such as in the workplace, hospitals and in road accidents and these can have serious implications for your future. As a result, making a compensation claim for a serious injury involves much more detail, with important factors needing to be included as you will only get one chance at settlement.

A serious injury could leave you unable to return to the job you were doing before or in fact leave you unable to work at all. If you have a family to support and look after, this can be devastating. Within any claim for personal injury, your solicitor will include your loss of earnings currently and your future loss of earnings if you will not work again. This will include your pension payments, any bonus or overtime you would have received and also include financial settlement for any future promotions.

Care and equipment you are entitled to

Additionally where you need long term care, perhaps even 24 hour care, these costs will be calculated for the rest of your lifetime. This is completed using hourly rates multiplied by the number of hours and further multiplied by your average life expectancy.

You will also be entitled to claim for any equipment you need such as a specialist wheelchair, computers, adaptations needed for your home or if in fact, your home is no longer suitable for you to live in, the cost to move home to something more suitable to your needs.

Compensation

Your compensation will also consist of an amount for your injuries themselves. Each injury carries a tariff which increases on a sliding scale depending on the seriousness of it. Therefore a whiplash injury to the neck will pay much less compensation than a broken neck. As your injuries are serious, you should rely on your solicitor to ensure that you get the best possible settlement for your injuries. This amount will also be based on whether you will recover and if not, the extent of the impact of the injury on your life.

If the other side has admitted responsibility for your accident, there is the possibility of securing some money in advance of the settlement of your claim to assist you with such things as making adaptations to your home. This is called an interim payment.

Whilst a personal injury claim will not be high on your list of priorities if you have suffered from a serious injury, you should be aware that there is a time limit of three years from the date of your accident to make a claim, after which you will have no entitlement to compensation.

If you would like more information about how to make a serious injury claim, please call us on 020 8520 1021,  or complete our Online Enquiry Form and we will be in touch soon.