The claimant’s details have been changed but this is indeed a true case
Ward & Rider Solicitors’ Director and Personal Injury Specialist Jason Claridge recently acted for Miss G from Bristol. He had previously acted for other members of Miss G’s family. Miss G had been a passenger in friend’s motor car. Unfortunately the driver of the other vehicle involved in this accident pulled out in front of the car in which Miss G was a passenger.
As a result, there was a collision and both cars suffered significant damage. Miss G, unfortunately, suffered injuries to her neck, to her left shoulder and to her left knee. She also suffered a psychological injury which took the form of anxiety. We notified the Defendant’s insurance company of this accident and they admitted liability.
We obtained reports from an Orthopaedic Surgeon in respect of Miss G’s physical injuries and a Psychologist in respect of her psychological injury. Both of the initial reports suggested that Miss G should recover from the effects of her injuries. Unfortunately she did not recover within the predicted prognosis period given by those medical experts.
This is not that uncommon, with some people being unfortunate enough not to recover within the predicted recovery period. We, therefore, updated the medical evidence and although Miss G recovered from the psychological injuries after some treatment she still had some ongoing problems with her physical injuries which didn’t inconvenience her too much.
In respect of her financial losses, we claimed for travelling expenses which were incurred as a result of this accident. We claimed for her treatment costs including medication, physiotherapy and counselling. We claimed for loss of earnings as she was unable to carry out her two part-time jobs, and we also claimed for some help and assistance provided by her family including cooking, shopping, cleaning, gardening and some DIY work which she would have otherwise done herself.
Miss G was initially offered £1,200. We advised that the offer was woefully inadequate. They then increased the offer to £12,000, which again we advised was inadequate. We made a counter offer which resulted in them making a further offer of £18,000. At this point we decided to issue court proceedings because we felt that the insurers were not dealing with the matter in an appropriate fashion. We spoke to the insurers for the Defendant and they reviewed the orthopaedic evidence, the psychological evidence and the schedule of financial losses which arose from the accident. They increased the offer from £18,000 to £24,000 but again we rejected this and they made a further offer which again was rejected, with Miss G ultimately accepting the sum of £25,500 in full and final settlement of her claim in its entirety. We acted on a no win, no fee basis.
Ward & Rider are able to assist in respect of all types of personal injury claims, including road traffic accident claims, accidents at work, tripping and slipping claims, holiday illness claims, claims arising out of the use of defective products and medical negligence claims.
