Road Traffic Accident Claims

There are two types of injury compensation that you may be entitled to. The first, called ‘general damages’, and is awarded to compensate you for the pain and suffering caused by the injury. The second type of injury compensation, called ‘special damages’, covers actual financial losses and expenses arising from the injury. This can include lost earnings, care given to you by your friends and family, costs of treatment, travel costs and various other expenses including future losses.

Please see our Personal Injury Claims services.

What will I get Personal Injury compensation for? – Video Transcript

A lot of clients ask us ‘What can I claim compensation for?’. For most claims, there’s two different aspects to it. There’s General Damages and there’s Special Damages. Your General Damages relates to your injury aspects of your claim, which is your pain, suffering and loss of amenity. That takes into account obviously how bad the pain was, how long you suffered for and what it’s impacted in your life in terms of what you can and can’t do now going forwards. In addition to that you’ve got your Special Damages which is your out-of-pocket expenses. These are loss of earnings, care and assistance, travel, it might be a sports membership or something like that that you can no longer use due to the accident. It’s obviously for the claimant to always prove their losses on those ones. So if you’re unaware of how to prove it, or what you need to show it, you can either check out one of our other videos or give us a call and we can go through it with you.

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There are certain limitation periods for making a personal injury claim and some exemptions too.

The Limitation Act stipulates the date by which you can make a claim after you have had an accident. In most cases, this is three years from the day the accident occurred. After this time, you cannot easily make a claim unless there is some special reason why you should be allowed to do so. For example, if you were unable to deal with your own affairs for a period of time.

There are exceptions, for example, the limitation date for children who have an accident when they are under 18^th. is their 21^st birthday. That is three years from when they became an adult. 

If your injury was not caused by a one-off event, for example, a repetitive strain injury, then the three-year timeline only starts to run on the day you became aware you had an injury as a result of the negligence of a third party. This might be the day you are diagnosed with a condition by your doctor.

There are a lot of exceptions to the three-year limitation date rule (you might only have one year to make a claim if your accident was in Spain or two years if it was on a boat) so the best advice is to give us a call and we will tell you where you stand.

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An interim payment in a personal injury claim is an amount of money paid by the insurance company for the Defendant to the Claimant prior to settlement of the claim. For example, in some cases, people often cannot get back to work immediately and consequently have a much-reduced income. In such cases, we can often make an application for an interim payment for you to alleviate any short-term financial difficulties.

In larger cases where someone has been very seriously injured, we may ask for an interim payment to enable works to be undertaken on the injured persons’ house to make it more accessible, for example, a walk-in shower or to lower the kitchen work surfaces for a wheelchair user. 

A no-win, no-fee, no success fee claim is when a claimant pays only the solicitors basic charges without any additional success fee on winning a personal injury claim funded on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.

Dominic Moss explains more in this video:

What is a no-win, no-fee, no success fee claim? Video Transcript

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There are two liabilities for your lawyers costs if you win your case, basic charges and then success fee on top. These are the legal costs liabilities that you normally incur if you win your personal injury claim funded on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.

These two items are added together to make your total liability for your solicitors’ charges. Only then, do some solicitors limit your liability for their costs with an overall cap, which is often 25% of your award of compensation, but this can be more or less depending on the firm.

So, for example if you are awarded £10,000 you might, in many cases end up with £7500 in your hand and pay 25% or £2500 to your solicitor.
At Stonehewer Moss we can offer a 0% success fee option. This means that if your claim is of high value or settles early, it is very likely you will end up with more money in your hand than you would’ve done if you went with a solicitor who charged you a success fee on top of their hourly rate.

In addition at Stonehewer Moss we EVEN LIMIT your liability to our basic charges so that is no more than 20% of your compensation and on a simple mathematical approach 20% is always going to be less than 25%, so your overall liability for costs in every case will be less, if you instruct Stonehewer Moss solicitors rather than a firm who charged you 25% of your damages.
Legal costs for personal injury cases are very complicated to understand and it may be that the above information is something that you have to read a number of times to be able to get your head around. If you’d rather have a chat, we will happily explain it to you over the phone or in person if you prefer.

We are an ethical, responsible, and accredited firm personally lawyers, looking to help genuine claimants who have suffered an accident related injury through no fault of their own, and have, perhaps lost earnings, perhaps had life changing injuries.

We are always pleased to explain anything you want to discuss about making a claim, at no charge, so that if you decide you want to go ahead with us, on whatever basis is best for you, you’re completely happy that you’ve made the right choice.

What is a success fee – video transcript.

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No. Your compensation is usually net of tax. Any claim for loss of earnings will be paid less any tax and National Insurance you would have paid. If you are claiming benefits related to your accident, your award might be reduced to repay these benefits. If you are claiming benefits not related to the accident, your lump sum award may affect your entitlement to benefits. We can help you with this by creating a personal injury trust.

We can help you by:

• Obtaining compensation for your road traffic accident claim;
• Recovering any loss of earnings you may have incurred from your accident on the road;
• Providing access to a replacement hire vehicle;
• Recovering any policy excess with your own insurers;
• Providing access to specialist rehabilitation care including physiotherapy;
• Claiming for an accident involving an uninsured driver through the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) scheme.

The value of every compensation claim for a road traffic accident depends on the seriousness of the injury as well as the chances of you making a full recovery.

In handling your claim, we will also look at other financial aspects such as medical expenses, vehicle repairs, and loss of earnings you may have had as a result of the accident. We will also factor into the value of your claim any long term medical expenses that you may incur for life-changing injuries that require ongoing medical treatment.

We will also seek to obtain interim payments where possible to help you to avoid financial hardship caused by an accident on the road that wasn’t your fault.

Whatever the nature of your injury, our aim is to get you the highest amount of compensation as quickly and stress-free as possible so that you can get your life back on track.

For the majority of cases involving road traffic accidents, claims for compensation must be made within three years of the date of the accident. There are, however, some exemptions to this rule in instances whereby you may be able to make a claim for an accident dating back further. As specialist personal injury lawyers, we will be able to advise you on your rights.

It’s best to get legal advice as soon as possible after your road traffic accident so that we can obtain crucial evidence and because there may be time limits.

We offer a Free No-Obligation Case Review so that we can understand more about the accident circumstances and to advise you on whether or not you have a claim.

We will guide and support you throughout the personal injury claims process, dealing directly with third parties and their insurance companies on your behalf to secure compensation for your injuries quickly and stress-free.

In some cases, road traffic accident claimants will make a personal injury claim through their car insurers’ solicitors. If you’re not happy with how your claim is being handled, you may be able to change legal advisors. If you’re looking for a local, specialist personal injury lawyer that can offer a more personal service, talk to us about moving your claim to us.