A personal injury accident can be a worrying time, not just because of the physical pain and suffering you may endure as a result of an injury, but the additional concerns regarding potential lost earnings and the effect of your injury on family members.
Suffering from an injury can also be a difficult time, not least because you may not know how to proceed, or what will follow should you formally instruct a solicitor to handle your claim. At Jackson Boyd, we specialise in personal injury law and have the necessary expertise to assist you through the journey of your claim, from beginning to end. We have prepared a summary of the likely journey of your personal injury claim so that you know the service we provide and the steps involved in securing the compensation you deserve.
Should you instruct Jackson Boyd, we will be with you through all of the steps outlined below and will assist you with investigating, intimating and resolving your claim.
Investigating the Claim
Investigating the accident circumstances and obtaining all relevant information at the very start of a claim is imperative. It is therefore advisable to seek legal advice while the facts are clear in your mind.
In terms of our role, one of our First Response Team members will speak with you and request all pertinent facts relating to the accident. This will allow us to determine if we can successfully pursue a claim for compensation on your behalf. Important questions that we will ask include:_
- Where the accident occurred,
- The factual circumstances of the accident,
- Is there independent evidence to support your claim,
- Can we establish liability for the accident
We will advise you accordingly depending on answers to the above questions. As a general rule you will have a period of 3 years from the date of your accident to either settle the claim or raise a court action. We will consider the individual circumstances of your case and the losses you have sustained. We will require full details of the injuries sustained and if medical attention was sought.
Intimating the Claim
Once we have taken details from you regarding the accident circumstances and the losses you have suffered we will intimate your claim to the insurers of the responsible party. They are required to acknowledge the claim and thereafter have a 3 month period to investigate the claim.
We will correspond with all parties associated with your claim including your own Insurers, the Third Party Insurers and all witnesses. We will ensure that all parties involved are aware that we represent you, which should assist you, in keeping the ‘hassle’ to a minimum. We will make all necessary liability enquiries, ensuring you are updated regularly on our progress. For ease, we prefer to correspond by email and telephone.
Medical Evidence
Once we have investigated liability and are satisfied that we have sufficient evidence to prove your case, we will obtain medical evidence in order to document the claim for personal injury. This will involve a consultation with an independent medical expert. The role of the expert will be to examine you and thereafter provide us with a medical report.
Every personal injury claim is different. We must consider the nature of the injuries you have sustained. This will determine which independent expert we instruct. Depending upon the severity of your injuries we may require the input of more than one expert. A soft tissue injury to the neck or back may warrant the instruction of an orthopaedic specialist. We may also deem it appropriate to arrange a consultation with a psychologist or psychiatrist, if you were suffering anxiety or other psychological symptoms.
Once we are in receipt of the medical report, we will forward this to you for approval. The medical evidence will hopefully provide us with sufficient information to value your claim.
Valuing the Claim
We will make sure that you are satisfied with the medical evidence obtained before releasing it to the Third Party Insurers. In order to value the claim correctly, we will review current literature, case law, and reference sources. In order to value your claim correctly, and with a view to maximising your compensation, we would always ensure we adjust our assessment of your claim to take your specific injuries and restrictions into consideration.
As mentioned previously, you may have suffered other losses as a result of your accident. Right from the start of the claim we will obtain the evidence to support all of these losses. There may be losses arising directly from the injury. A claim for services can be pursued where family members are required to attend to additional duties on your behalf, or even assist you with your day to day activities. Have you suffered a loss of earnings? If so, we will ensure we obtain all relevant documents from your employer allowing us to calculate any loss of income stemming from the accident.
You may have suffered other minor losses following the accident and we will deal with these as efficiently as possible.
Offers
Once we have obtained all of the relevant evidence we will forward this to the other party’s insurers and seek a settlement offer. We would expect to receive an offer within 5 weeks. If, however, we did not receive an offer within a reasonable period of time or, the offer was not within the expected scale, we would consider litigating on your behalf. Please be assured that we will advise you fully as to whether or not you should be accepting an offer as soon as it is received.
If you did instruct us to raise a court action, in order to better an offer, we would ensure that you were kept informed throughout. The majority of cases are settled without the need to go to a full court hearing, albeit if there was a requirement to proceed to an evidential hearing, one of our solicitors would be there to support and represent you.
The journey of a personal injury can appear complex and daunting, but Jackson Boyd will be with you every step of the way. We will be available by phone or in person to help talk you through all developments that occur in your file. Ultimately, our aim is to secure you the compensation you deserve and to make the journey as easy for you as possible. For more information contact us by email or telephone and speak to a member of our specialist team.
