The claimant’s details have been changed but this is indeed a true case
£20,000 for an East Midlands woman who was involved in a road traffic accident.
Ward & Rider Solicitors acted for Mrs A recently in connection with her road traffic accident claim. She was the passenger in a car which was involved in a rather unfortunate accident. The driver lost control of his vehicle and left the road, with the end result that his car collided with a lamp post. As a result, Mrs A suffered an injury to her neck. She went to the hospital where she had an X-ray. As she was still not recovering, she went to see her General Practitioner and physiotherapy was arranged for her. Unfortunately, this did not lead to a complete resolution of her symptoms.
We brought the claim against the driver. The driver’s insurers never formally admitted liability. They argued that the driver had suffered a loss of control of the vehicle due to a medical issue. They said that this gave them a defence to the claim, because he could not be at fault for this. We counter-argued that if he knew that he had a problem of this nature then he should not have offered to give our client a lift.
We instructed an Orthopaedic Surgeon to see our client. We also put forward a claim for financial losses. That claim included a claim for her travelling to and from hospital, the GP and the physiotherapist and a claim for treatment costs as she had purchased medication and she had also had some physiotherapy.
She was able to work, but she struggled with heavier chores at home. She used to enjoy working in her garden. The garden was not particularly big, but she liked to keep it very neat and tidy. She found certain tasks in the garden difficult. She gave up weeding because it hurt her neck. She gave up painting her fences because it hurt her neck. She also enjoyed DIY at home, particularly painting and decorating her house internally. She found painting difficult and in particular she found looking up at the ceiling caused discomfort to her neck.
She struggled a little with the shopping – she used to go to a local shop and carry the bags home, but this hurt her neck as carrying heavy shopping bags put a strain on it. She therefore began to drive to the shops and on occasions used online shopping to ease the strain that it put on her neck. Some of the housework she also struggled with, particularly when it involved her moving furniture around. She was lucky in that she had a really supportive family and close friends. They therefore helped her with such tasks. Based on their evidence, we felt that she probably had 1 to 2 hours help per week, on average, in relation to the various tasks, depending upon the season of the year. We asked the expert whether he would support this and his view was that he would, because of the ongoing impact upon her caused by her neck injuries.
We ended up having to issue Court proceedings because of the fact that the Defendant’s insurers refused to accept the claim initially, and then they refused to make appropriate offers of compensation. Their first offer was just over £2,000. There was then a series of offers and counter offers involving Jason Claridge, on behalf of the Claimant, acting as her Personal Injury Specialist Solicitor, and the Defendant’s Solicitors. We got to a point where the offer was within £1,000 of our valuation of the claim, with them making an offer to her to settle the claim for all of her injuries, travel and treatment costs and the help and assistance provided to her of £20,000.
We acted on a No Win, No Fee basis. We are prepared to act for Claimants on a No Win, No Fee basis in respect of most claims involving accidents at work, tripping and slipping claims, road traffic accident claims and accidents caused by the negligence of the medical profession.