A Step by Step Guide to Making A Personal Injury Claim

1. At the Scene of the Accident

Your key priority after being involved in an accident is to ensure you safety. If it isn’t an emergency but you’d like medical advice, call the non emergency helpline or visit your local GP. You may need to go to hospital by ambulance if your injuries are more serious.

2. Check for any Witnesses

If your accident took place in a public location, such as a road traffic accident, it is worth asking any people who saw what happened, to come forward as witnesses. Passers-by can often provide you with useful evidence for a personal injury claim, particularly if the other party denies liability. So if anyone saw your accident, ask for their contact details so your solicitor can get hold of them for a witness statement later on. If the police were called to the scene.

If you suffered an accident in a public place such as a slip, trip, or fall, due to someone else’s negligence, you could be due compensation. We would advise you to take photos of your injury and find out if there are/were CCTV cameras that caught your accident happening.

3. Write Down What Happened

If there were no witnesses present, you will have to rely on your own memory for much of the testimony, so it’s worth writing down your memory of the incident while they are fresh in your mind. A personal injury claim relies on gathering evidence from witness statements to CCTV footage. Taking handwritten notes has been shown to improve memory, so you’re more likely to remember the details of the accident if you write notes just after the event.

Whilst you are at it, remember to write down details of all your financial losses too. You can claim these back as long as they are losses incurred as a result of the accident.

4. Seek No Win No Fee Legal Assistance

Accidents at work are all too common, so if you have suffered due to someone else’s negligence, you may be entitled to make a No Win No Fee personal injury claim. Whether your accident was a trip at work, a cycling accident, or any other type of accident that wasn’t your fault AND that has caused injury to you.

When you call personalinjuriessolicitorsdublin, you will speak to a solicitor or another experienced member of our team, instead of someone at the impersonal call centre of a Claims Company.

5. Gathering Information

When you get in touch, we will carry out an assessment to see if you could make a claim.

First of all, we will need some information about your accident. For example, we will go through what happened, where it happened, whether there were any witnesses, and take details of injuries that you have suffered.

We will also give you some practical advice about getting checked over by your doctor, keeping a note of how your injury symptoms are progressing daily, and so on. From what we discuss we will be able to give you our assessment of whether we think your claim has reasonable prospects of success.

If we believe that your claim has decent prospects of succeeding, then the choice will be yours as to:

1. a) whether you pursue a claim
2. b) which solicitor you decide to use

No one can force you to use a specific personal injury solicitor, to deal with your injury claim. If you have been involved in a road traffic accident, often your own insurers or a claims management company will try to persuade you to use their favoured solicitors to deal with your compensation claim. 

6. Should you make a personal injury claim?

If you have suffered injury and loss because of an accident that was caused by someone else’s fault, then you should make a claim.

7. Getting Medical Evidence for Your Claim

Your claim for personal injury will be put together by obtaining medical evidence of the injuries that you suffered because of the accident. Make an appointment to see your doctor. Your GP will check out your injuries and give practical advice and treatment.

1. Many injuries WILL settle without going to a doctor for help – however, they might settle more quickly and be less uncomfortable if your GP is able to provide some early treatment.
2. By not visiting your GP, you might just be making your injuries worse. It’s not advisable to self-diagnose.
3. If you don’t go to seek medical advice or assistance after the accident, then the other partys’ insurer may try to imply that your injuries aren’t genuine. As you will be seeing a further doctor later on during the claim, it’s not vital that you have been to see your GP beforehand, but it just makes matters more straightforward if you have and if it is documented.

We can arrange to get your medical records from your GP. Your medical records will help the doctor, who will often be a consultant, to put together his medical report.

If your injuries take a while to settle down, you may need follow up examinations. In the case of the accident having caused multiple injuries, you may need to see a number of different specialist doctors for medical reports.

You may also be asked to see a doctor of the insurance company’s choice.

Gathering evidence to support a personal injury claim is key. If you instruct personalinjuriessolicitorsdublin to deal with your injury claim, we will guide you through every stage of this process.

8. The Settlement

If your case is a success, you will be entitled to compensation for the pain and suffering you have gone through, as well as any loss of earnings, medical treatment and financial losses incurred as a result of the accident.

You will receive the compensation awarded to you, after the deduction of any success fee due to us. In most cases we are able to fund personal injury claims using a No Win No Fee Agreement.

What is a personal injury case?

At its most basic level, the definition of a personal injury case is:

• A legal dispute between someone who has suffered an injury to their body or mind, and the person who caused the injury, by their negligent action(s).
• It is a civil (as opposed to a criminal) type of case.
• When the injured person (the claimant) decides to pursue a claim for personal injury compensation against the negligent person (party), the ‘claim’ is presented in the form of a personal injury case.
• The claimant will often decide to ask a specialist personal injury solicitor, to do the necessary legal work to pursue the claim against the negligent party.
• Doing this may involve issuing court proceedings against the negligent party, to make sure the case progresses. By doing this the case may go to court, or more often than not, the dispute will settle by negotiation between the two parties.

1.  Motor/Road Traffic Accident claims

The research revealed that the majority of personal injury cases are made as a result of road traffic accidents. In fact, the report’s findings concluded that as much as 80% of all personal injury compensation claims are  brought as a consequence of collisions involving motor vehicles.

2.  Accidents in Public places

It might not be immediately obvious to everyone reading this article, what type of personal injury cases come under this heading.

The term accidents in public places covers a number of accident scenarios of which the most well-known is probably that of the ‘Slip, Trip and Fall’ accident.

Many serious injuries are caused each year by pedestrians tripping over uneven flagstones on the high street pavement or slipping on wet surfaces in shopping malls i.e., accidents that happen in public places.

Between approximately 10% of all reported injury cases each year are for accidents in public places. Sometimes you’ll hear of these being referred to as Public Liability cases. The two terms are used interchangeably.

3.  Accidents at Work/Employers liability cases/Workplace accident claims

Approximately 9% of personal injury cases every year, are made as a result of accidents at work.

The nature and severity of injuries sustained in accident at work cases, cover a very wide range, including:

• Back injuries suffered as a result of employees slipping over on a wet factory floor or tripping over cables left strewn across the office floor.
• Limbs that require amputation after they become entangled in faulty machinery.
• Fatal accidents e.g., when an employee falls from height, in a scaffolding accident on a construction site.

Employers owe their workers a duty of care to prevent from coming to harm whilst they are at work. Accidents at work are frequently made by workers who get injured because their employers have breached the duty of care that they owe their employees.

Whether it’s a personal injury claim that you are looking to make, or a medical negligence the number to call is personalinjuriessolicitorsdublin on 0872905001.