Employers in the UK might think are vulnerable to any manner of speculative or vexatious claims from employees, however they should be grateful they aren’t in Australia, where a recent case will have the Institute of Directors and Tory MPs spluttering into their copies of the Daily Telegraph.

 Roll on Friday, the purveyor of legal news and salacious gossip, carried this story (which also featured in the Australian Telegraph) about an HR executive required to travel for a meeting and to stay overnight in a motel.  During this overnight stay she had sex with a male acquaintance (not a work colleague), which led to her sustaining facial injuries and psychiatric injury from a falling light fitting.

She sued her employer on the basis that the injuries had been sustained “during the course of her employment”.  RoF reports the rationale for this thus;

“Justice Nicholas stated that she didn’t have to show that her employer had encouraged or induced her to have sex, “If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room she would be entitled to compensation“. And as sex is a lawful activity, she should be compensated for her injuries.”

I’m wondering if the court was asked to consider whether any degree of contributory negligence applied to her for not checking that the chandelier was safe before she started swinging from it.

Thanks to @taruntawakley whose tweet brought it to my attention.

Woman injured having sex on work trip was conducting activities in course of employment and compensated http://t.co/pgTDVh2b #ukemplaw #hr

20/04/2012 5:11 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@TarunTawakley

Tarun Tawakley

Related posts:

1. One million suffering from brain injuries in the UK every year

Employer Liable for Employee’s Injuries Sustained During Sex Session originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 21/04/2012.

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Having an accident at work can bring serious consequences.  As well as the pain and suffering that will inevitably accompany an injury, there may be significant other losses as well, such as loss of earnings or medical treatment fees.  If you can prove that the employer was at fault then it may be possible to recover work accident compensation.

 Every employer owes a duty of care to its employees to provide them with a safe system of work. Difficulties can arise in proving that a breach of the duty of care was negligent.   To assist employees there are a number of statutory duties laid down which impose obligations on employers.  For instance, the Management Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require all employers to carry out a risk assessment of every aspect of the work environment and activities. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 set out minimum standards to be adhered to at work.

The Manual Handling & Operations Regulations require that all heavy lifting tasks be avoided or, if they can’t be, that effective training and measures be put in place to prevent injuries occurring.

The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations impose a duty of strict liability on an employer if an employee is injured using work equipment.  This means that a Claimant only has to prove that the injury was caused by the work equipment and not that the employer was at fault in any way.  For an employee that is a considerable boon because it can often be difficult to prove negligence.

Don’t forget as well that an employer may be liable for the actions of a fellow employee, so if the injury is caused by a colleague’s carelessness or fault it may be possible to hold the employer vicariously liable for the other employee’s negligence.

The key to obtaining compensation is to take specialist advice.  Accidents at work can be complicated and you need someone who is familiar with the law.

Related posts:

1. Accidents at Work and on the Roads

Compensation for Workplace Accidents originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 19/04/2012.

Stress at work is an issue that comes across many employment lawyers’ desks. It gets raised as an issue, rightly or wrongly, in many disputes between employer and employee and is often used by some employees to disrupt disciplinary and performance management proceedings brought against them.Some employers probably do not care how much work or aggravation they heap upon their workforce in the race to remain competitive and get the job done.

But “playing the stress card” can bring its own difficulties. Succeeding with a claim for personal injury arising from stress at work is always difficult and that message was repeated in the recent case of MacLennan v Hartford Europe Ltd. The Claimant failed to overcome the two biggest hurdles for any Claimant in these cases: causation of the illness/injury and foreseeability, despite the fact that she became significantly unwell.

The Claimant was a conscientious, hard working, HR manager. She claimed that she was put under an excessive workload and intolerable pressure dealing with “challenging” individuals, although Mr Justice Hickinbottom in the High Court did not uphold her complaints. Mrs MacLennan became unwell with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in 2006. Her claim was based on the argument that her CFS was caused by her immune system having been suppressed by the work environment. She argued that she suffered a lot of illness (colds, viruses etc) leading up to chickenpox and then CFS. That argument was ultimately rejected on the basis, crucially, of the expert evidence and also because her health record pre-CFS was no worse than for any other person.

She was accepted onto the Defendant’s Permanent Health Insurance (PHI)policy and received an income from that until her employer closed its London office in 2009 and all staff, including the Claimant, were made redundant, thus ending the PHI payments.

Mrs MacLennan issued proceedings. When it got to trial in the High Court, the principles established in the leading case of Hatton v Sutherland [2002] were dusted down. In that case, which significantly raised the bar for employees seeking to bring such claims there were held to be fourteen “propositions” that needed to be addressed before a Claimant could succeed and recover compensation.

In MacLennan the court focussed on four of Lady Hale’s propositions;

1. For a Claimant to succeed with a claim the employee must prove that his employer knew or ought to have known that as a result of stress at work that there was a risk he would suffer psychiatric or other medical condition, as confirmed in Bonser v UK Coal Mining Ltd

2. Further, knowledge of the risk of some psychiatric or other injury might arise is insufficient: the employee has to prove that the employer knew or ought to have known that there was a n imminent risk of the sort of collapse of health that the employee actually suffered. “Merely” saying that the employer should have been aware that the employee would become ill if the work regime continued unaltered isn’t enough.

3. An employer is entitled to assume that an employee can withstand the normal pressures of work unless (a) the job is such that other employees are known to be at risk of injury (ie if there have been other cases) or (b) an employer knows or ought to know that an employee is vulnerable to stress-induced illness i.e. because they have had a stress induced illness before, as was the case in Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995] or they have let the employer know if they are at risk of suffering harm.

4. An employer has a duty toact only where the indications are plain enough that he should do something about it.

This means that the foreseeability threshold test is a very difficult one for employees to surmount. No occupation is seen as being intrinsically dangerous (as held in Hatton). Most people will not want to let their employers know they are struggling at work, especially if the work environment is very macho or there is a risk of being made “redundant”. For this reason the only cases which are likely to be successful are those where the employee has already suffered a breakdown or is brave or confident enough to make the employer aware they are unwell. An employee who does disclose to his employer the fact of being unwell and then is dismissed or subjected to a detriment for some supposedly unrelated reason may, of course, have claims that he could bring at an Employment Tribunal, but most employees will keep quiet about the illness until too late to avoid just that eventuality.

The other major hurdle is causation. In this case Mrs MacLennan brought her claim on the basis that stress at work caused her to develop CFS, which is a serious condition albeit one about which there is disagreement over whether it is an organic or psychological illness. The Court was not prepared to accept that there was a causal link between stress and a deficient immune system and the illness.

In the end, Ms MacLennan lost because she could not prove a causative link between the experience she had suffered at work and her ill health and her case wasn’t helped by the Judge not accepting some of her evidence on how ill she had been in the run up to developing CFS. It’s not a surprising result and it shows just how difficult it is for employees to succeed with these claims, particularly if there have been no previous episodes of stress induced illness.

Any employee who is at risk of suffering a stress-induced illness needs to consider making their employer aware of it before crisis strikes and they become too unwell to work This is not a step to be taken lightly, but without doing so it could be very difficult to prove that the employer should have known and taken steps to prevent the situation getting worse. For any employee thinking of bringing a stress at work claim, bear in mind the following points;

1. A very detailed history of the events causing the stress will be needed, and supporting witness evidence (if it can be obtained) will be very useful, especially on the issue of what the employer knew of the situation.

2. The court will look very closely at a Claimant’s medical history (via medical notes), particularly any other pre-dating non-work stress related illnesses

3. A successful Claimant will need to have very good expert medical evidence from an independent Consultant in the appropriate medical discipline(s): a report or medical certificate from a GP just won’t cut it. The medical expert needs to be experienced in giving evidence in court, not all are.

4. Claims for stress at work tend to be strongly defended by employers’ liability insurers. Consequently the proceedings themselves (like all litigation) will be stressful, and expensive.

Is this how it should be? Although Hatton produces a harsh result against employees, and potentially allows employers to “turn a blind eye”, could it realistically be any other way? If the law on foreseeability was relaxed it would risk many more claims being brought (and succeeding) and place a very strenuous burden on employers trying to manage their businesses. But even so, the modern workplace can be a harsh and unforgiving place, even if laws are in place to prevent the worst excesses of bullying and harassment (although query how effective they sometimes are). However, in one sense, Hatton failed because many employees who are made unwell at work through being overworked or subjected to unreasonable behaviour by their peers or line managers have no effective remedy, yet this has not seeped through into the public consciousness.

Related posts:

1. Stress at work
2. Seven Ways for Employers to Avoid Stress at Work Claims
3. UK Banks Facing Rising Lawsuits over Stress? Really?

Stress at Work: No Change Following MacLennan originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 14/03/2012.

Ever wondered how, as an employer, you should treat your office workers? Here is an amusing infografic from training agency Tutorcare that puts it into pictures for you. I have my doubts about what is going on in the picture about fire safety – could be a grievance for sexual harassment waiting to happen – but maybe I’m being harsh.

Infographic by: TutorCare

Thanks to Gareth of TutorCare for sending me this infografic

Related posts:

1. Employers Watch Out: It’s Office Party Time!
2. Employee, worker or neither?

How to Treat an Office Worker originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 01/03/2012.

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If you’ve suffered an accident, whether at work, on the roads or on the streets, you need to prove that someone else was responsible. Compensation isn’t automatically available; you first need to prove that the employer, the other vehicle driver or the occupier of the premises was at fault in some way.  When the other party owes you a duty of care and they fail to meet the required standard, you may be able to recover some compensation.  That often isn’t easy.  The law can be complicated, especially where the accident occurred in the workplace. You need to get good legal advice from a firm of specialist  injury lawyers to advise you as soon as possible after the accident has occurred.

A personal injury, whether suffered in an accident at work or in a Road Traffic Accident (RTA), or “merely” just a slip or trip in the street can be a serious, even devastating blow.  Lives can be significantly impacted by injury, not just in terms of pain and suffering but also loss of earnings, treatment fees and, in the most serious cases, care and adaptations round the home when someone is left disabled as a result.

Although most personal injury claims do settle before court proceedings have to be issued, there are many expenses that have to be incurred to prepare the claim. The most obvious one is the medical report (or reports in serious cases): they can amount to several hundred pounds and for self-employed people a report from an accountant might be necessary to support a claim for loss of profit.

Legal Aid is no longer available to cover legal fees incurred in fighting personal injury claims and the range of funding options can be complicated.  If you consult a firm of no win no fee solicitors you will be given advice on how a claim can be funded. With a no win no fee agreement it is usually possible for a Claimant to insure against the risk of losing the claim and having to pay the other side’s costs (usually an insurance company). They will also will be able to assist in arranging the necessary reports to enable you to pursue your claim.

Related posts:

1. Personal injury solicitor – fighting for your rights
2. Have You Suffered a Personal Injury?
3. Personal Injury Awards are “Not Sacrosanct”

When Can You Claim For Personal Injury? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 27/02/2012.

Get a 10% discount on the booking fee for the above conference by clicking here and quoting “Scutt10″

During the Christmas break I read an article in The Independent about an increase in the number of “Valium addicts” being created by GPs and it stated

“Doctors are being sued for creating prescription drug addicts amid claims they have failed to follow safety guidelines published more than 20 years ago”

The number of clinical negligence claims is said to be increasing, from people who have been prescribed benzodiazepine drugs (which include diazepam/valium and lorazepam/ativan) for long periods of time and who have suffered injury and illness when coming off them.  The report suggests that GPs are still prescribing the drugs and quotes a Professor Malcolm Lader who believes there is a link between long-term tranquiliser use and brain damage as saying the Royal College of GPs is in denial about the issue.

This got me thinking on several levels.  The first was a reminder that when I was an articled clerk (ie trainee solicitor) back in 1991-93, I was told by my firm to “look after” the ten or so (legally aided) clients we had who were involved in the Benzodiazepine (BDZ) litigation which, at the time, was the biggest class action ever seen in the UK. The central thrust of the claims was that the drug companies should have known, or did know but didn’t act on the knowledge that long term prescription of BDZs could lead to injury. I don’t recall doctors being named as Defendants. It was frustrating work because all the exciting legal and medical stuff was done by the lead firms and my High Street firm acted as little more than a remote outpost, receiving instructions in the monthly bulletins from the lead firms, instructing the medical experts on the recommended lists and waiting for the inevitable outcome, which was collapse of the whole litigation after about three years.

Looking back it was obvious that the Plaintiffs, as they were then known in those long ago days pre-Woolf, would fail on the issue of causation.  In essence our clients, all of whom had (as far as I can recall now 20 years on) fairly nasty and intractable mental health issues anyway and it wasn’t possible to prove that the quality of their lives would have been much better without the drugs. Are we about to see a re-run of that litigation and that outcome?

In the first instance the potential defendants are different – last time it was the drug companies and this time the people prescribing the drugs who, surely, really should know better following the previous litigation? Breach of duty of care shouldn’t be much of an issue, but I suspect causation will be … again.

The story also got me thinking about the bigger scandal, which is the complete lack of meaningful assistance for people suffering from mental illness.  I’ve acted over the years in both personal injury and employment cases for many people suffering from mental illness and have seen the effects personally to me at close quarters. Doctors seem to have a very limited arsenal of tools with which to treat what is a massive problem in the UK.  They seem to have a wide variety of drugs to hand over (SSRIs, MAOI, TCAs etc) but trying to find a treatment other than a “mother’s little helper” is much harder.  Most of these drugs seem to take ages to work, give horrible side-effects when being taken and don’t do anything to cure the underlying problem.  That seems to be the task of so-called “talking therapies”, but try finding your way through the maze of counsellors and psychologists and any other number of “therapists” offering this or that “method” and it may lead you to the point of madness anyway. Even if you find someone, how do you know they are competent and won’t cause more harm than good? You might expect the overstretched NHS to struggle to offer anything, but do the big charities offer anything better?  Trying to find a support group for someone suffering from acute anxiety seems virtually impossible, for example.

Talking therapies are supposed to be much more successful in curing mental illness but it seems from what I have seen to be a neglected area.  Taking another pill instead is easy – it takes away the crisis but not the long term underlying cause.  I have some sympathy for overstretched GPs who can only spare 5 minutes with each patient at maximum.  Perhaps the NHS should spend some of the many millions it undoubtedly spends on anti-depressant drugs on developing and regulating the “talking therapy” sector, perhaps in conjunction with the relevant charities.  Will it take a potentially massive litigation against the NHS in the form of another BDZ class action to cause public policy to change?

The third thought I had on the issue was that back then most of the Claimants were funded by legal aid.  That won’t happen this time.  The participants will all be signed up on No Win No Fee agreements, backed by insurance (if the ATE industry will support it) meaning that if it collapses again it won’t be the taxpayer footing the bill. Undoubtedly many deserving Claimants won’t be able to seek redress.

None of this is new of course.  The Rolling Stones sang about it over 45 years ago;

“Kids are different today, I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day”

No related posts.

Mother’s Little Helper? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 12/01/2012.

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Family lawyers often talk about how Christmas gives rise to an upsurge in divorce work in the New Year. The same is probably also true of personal injury work, if to a lesser extent. Claims for personal injury usually involve

• an accident at work,
•  Road Traffic Accident
• a slip or trip on a pavement
• injury by a faulty product.

The numbers of road traffic accidents increases in the winter with poor light and icy conditions.

If you have been injured in an accident you may want to take legal advice from solicitors that undertake work on a no win no fee basis. Before you can claim compensation you have to prove that the person responsible for the accident was negligent and that can be very difficult.

Accidents at Work & Occupational Illness

There has been much discussion over the last few weeks about the proposed changes to employment law.  What has been less talked about is another part of the Coalition government’s “bonfire of red tape” and budgetary cuts, being the reduction in the Health and Safety Executive’s budget, which will lead to fewer automatic inspections by the HSE of workplaces.

The HSE published its own Annual Statistics Report for 2010/11 recently and it contained some sobering facts.  In that period 171 workers were killed at work and 115,379 employees suffered injuries that were reportable under the Government’s RIDDOR scheme. In addition a further 200,000 employees suffered workplace injuries requiring more than three days absence.

On average each accident at work led to 15 days lost from work, which grosses up to 22.1 million days lost because of work-related ill health (e.g stress at work, mesothelioma and musculoskeletal disorders) and 4.4 million because of injury.  The number of cases of mesothelioma (caused by inhalation of asbestos) has increased substantially since 1968, when 153 people died, to 2321 in 2009.  The numbers of asbestos related cancers are expected to peak around 2016. The HSE estimates that the number of occupational cancer related deaths is around 8,000 per annum.

The HSE reports that around three-quarters of new work related conditions were either stress, depression/anxiety or musculoskeletal disorders.

Road Traffic Accidents

According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Great Britain has one of the best road safety records in the world, but shockingly 1 in 5 people are killed on the roads each day. The main causes of accidents include speeding, drink driving, inexperience and failing to look properly.

Accidents on the road can lead to fatalities and injuries of the utmost seriousness down to more minor (but nonetheless painful and unpleasant) whiplash injuries.

Road Traffic Accidents can raise difficult legal and procedural problems, even in less serious cases.  It is important to take specialist advice from whiplash solicitors if you have suffered a neck or back injury.

Related posts:

1. Compensation for Workplace Accidents
2. Accident at Work? The Legal Basics You Need to Know
3. Personal injury solicitor – fighting for your rights

Accidents at Work and on the Roads originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 22/12/2011.

Banks are facing a rising tide of stress at work claims, according to Reuters yesterday. The report refers to anecdotal evidence by GQ Employment Lawyers to the effect that the number of “stress related lawsuits” is on the increase, but doesn’t say what type of lawsuits, nor give any statistics to back up the assertion.

 Never mind, the Health & Safety Executive’s own statistics for 2010/11 state the following;

“The number of new cases of stress, depression or anxiety has fallen from an estimated 254,000 in 2001/02 to 211,000 [in 2010/11]” *

Whether that downward trend will continue in 2011/12 or be broken as the report suggests we will have to wait and see. In my view it is unlikely that we will see a tidal wave of stress claims in the courts or Tribunals for various reasons – see below – but because when the next recession, which looks inevitable now, strikes it will be accompanied by job losses.  The CIPD produced a report yesterday predicting a “slow, painful contraction” in the jobs market in Quarter Four this year as many employers impose a hiring freeze. It isn’t actually predicting a rise in redundancies merely that once you’re out of a job you may find it hard to get another one.

I’ve acted for many employees over the years with occupational illnesses or injuries (including stress cases) and the one factor that usually concerns most, if not all of them, is the reaction of their employer if they bring a personal injury claim or assert their legal rights in some way.  Bankers are prey to this concern just as much as any other workers, arguably more so if they think it might jeopardise their annual bonus. The other concern, which should be ameliorated by the banning of pre-job offer health enquiries by employers under the Equality Act but probably isn’t, is that having a lengthy spell off work with stress will render a job-seeker “damaged goods”.

If I‘m wrong and a flood of stress at work claims does arise there’s another important consideration to bear in mind.  It’s relatively easy to commence a claim, start a protocol or issue proceedings, but quite another to win and recover compensation. Most employers faced with a stress at work claim aren’t likely to simply roll over and pay up.

There are several possible claims; in negligence for personal injury, for harassment under the Protection from

Harassment Act 1997 (PHA), or for injury to feelings at an Employment Tribunal if the stress is caused by harassment on the grounds of sex, race, disability, age, religious belief or sexual orientation (known as “Protected Characteristics”) . All it says is that claims from financial services staff are increasing, in the face of challenging economic conditions, long working hours, the threat of redundancy as well as being the occupation that currently everyone loves to hate (well, it gives estate agents and solicitors a break I suppose).

To sue for personal injury in the tort of negligence (which is the type of claim you would make if you suffered a whiplash injury in a car crash or a back injury from lifting something heavy at work) a Claimant has to have suffered a medically recognised illness or injury.  “Mere” stress won’t be enough, it has to go beyond that and will need to be verified by a medical practitioner, preferably a Consultant Psychiatrist.  That will be expensive.

The first legal issue is whether the illness/injury was reasonably foreseeable to the employer, in other words would the reasonable employer have realised, or should they have realised, that an employee subjected to those particular working conditions would suffer a psychological injury or illness.  That can be a difficult hurdle to overcome because mental illness tends to be “invisible” and most people don’t admit they have a problem until they become very unwell.  An employer is entitled to view his/her staff as being ordinarily robust and able to deal with the ups and downs of the workplace unless they have particular knowledge to the contrary.  It is in those cases where an employee has suffered mental illness, notified the employer of it, been off work as a result and then returned only to have another breakdown later on that have tended to be successful with claim for personal injury.

The second main problem tends to be in proving that the illness/injury was caused by or contributed to by the actions of the employer.  That usually means a forensic examination of the Claimant’[s medical records to see if they have any other stressors in their life – such as a prior history of mental illness, or have been going through a divorce, in trouble with the police etc.

Finally, these type of claims tend to be very expensive to put together, usually vigorously contested by the employer’s EL insurer and, because the claim is taken through the Court (High or County), there is a risk of losing and having to pay the other side’s costs – at least until the Jackson litigation reforms are introduced and we have “Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting”.

Claims under the PHA are, perhaps, slightly easier if the Claimant can show a near criminal standard of harassment from, e.g. their line manager, but that sort of claim doesn’t help an employee who is grossly overworked and trying to do the work of three people.  The ET claims for harassment and victimisation also require a “Protected Characteristic” to be the motivating factor in the employer’s behaviour.

Personal injury law is very unhelpful to people suffering from mental illness caused by the workplace. There won’t be a great increase in the number of claims going through the courts because the substantive law hasn’t changed.

• HSE Annual Statistics 2010/11 p.5

Related posts:

1. Seven Ways for Employers to Avoid Stress at Work Claims
2. Stress at work
3. Seven Top Stress Management Tips for Employees

UK Banks Facing Rising Lawsuits over Stress? Really? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 15/11/2011.

Guest Post

According to a recent article by no win no fee solicitors agency, First4Lawyers, around 15 people every single hour – that’s 130,000 patients a year – in Britain are admitted to hospital suffering from brain injuries or all severities. With brain injury figures on a steady incline, so too, it would seem, is the instance of third party negligence – like employer and medical negligence (for which many either don’t realise they can or don’t want to claim compensation). It’s fast becoming, therefore, quite apparent that something needs to be done to help prevent the risk of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

First4Lawyers, which is not itself a law firm, but puts victims in touch with injury lawyers that have the most experience in dealing with cases like theirs, is frequently contacted by people who have suffered injury in the workplace. While many are afraid to take their employer to task over accidents that occur in the workplace, it’s important that we do so in order to improve the standard of employment conditions not only in our individual places of work, but across the UK, too.

And while court success has seen some victims receive six- and seven-figure compensation pay outs, it’s still no compensation for the often horrific brain injuries (and the subsequent physical, mental and emotional fall out for the victim and their loved ones) sustained at work or, indeed, elsewhere.

Any blow to the head, no matter how light, can ultimately result in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the right circumstances, and can go on to cause a wide variety of side effects, ranging from concussion to permanent physically or mental disability or even fatality. Victims of brain trauma can suffer afflictions such as temporary or permanent memory, sight and speech loss, as well as anxiety, depression, behavioural and/or anger issues, and paralysis.

Approximately one million people each year are rushed into A&E departments all over the UK with reports of head injuries, and are therefore exposed to these health dangers.

It’s incredibly important that while you’re at work, you’re on the lookout for things that could potentially cause an accident. It’s not only up to your employer to provide the minimum basic health and safety measures, it’s also up to you to make sure that you don’t make conditions unsafe for your colleagues – and spotting a hazard and not reporting it means that you’re tacitly agreeing for that hazard to be there, and thus putting yourself and your colleagues at serious risk of injury.

This post was brought to you by www.medicalsolicitors.co.uk

Related posts:

1. Employer Liable for Employee’s Injuries Sustained During Sex Session

One million suffering from brain injuries in the UK every year originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 26/09/2011.

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A personal injury, whether suffered in an accident at work or in a Road Traffic Accident (RTA), or “merely” just a slip or trip in the street can be a serious, even devastating blow.  Lives can be significantly impacted by injury, not just in terms of pain and suffering but also loss of earnings, treatment fees and, in the most serious cases, care and adaptations round the home when someone is left disabled as a result.

Compensation isn’t available as of right; you first need to prove that someone was at fault for causing the accident.  That often isn’t easy.  The law can be complicated, especially where the accident occurred in the workplace. You need to get good legal advice from a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers to advise you as soon as possible after the accident has occurred.

Although most claims do settle before court proceedings have to be issued, there are many expenses that have to be incurred to prepare the claim. The most obvious one is the medical report (or reports in serious cases): they can amount to several hundred pounds and for self-employed people a report from an accountant might be necessary to support a claim for loss of profit.

Legal Aid is no longer available to cover legal fees incurred in fighting personal injury claims and the range of funding options are complicated.  If you consult a firm of no win no fee solicitors you will be given advice on how a claim can be funded. With a no win no fee agreement it is usually possible for a Claimant to insure against the risk of losing the claim and having to pay the other side’s costs (usually an insurance company). They will also will be able to assist in arranging the necessary reports to enable you to pursue your claim.

Related posts:

1. Personal injury solicitor – fighting for your rights
2. When Can You Claim For Personal Injury?
3. Personal Injury Awards are “Not Sacrosanct”

Have You Suffered a Personal Injury? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 31/08/2011.