Below is a law blog post on personal injury law from My Compensation.
Working in the personal claims industry, one of the most common questions that we get asked is: How much compensation will I receive? And rightly so. If you’re going to take time out of our day to start a compensation claim, even if 95% of the work is handled by a solicitor and claims expert such as My Compensation, you should want to know how much compensation you can expect.
There are two main factors to take into consideration when working out roughly how much compensation you’re owed. The first is how seriously the injury, insult, or other wrong-doing has affected, or will affect your life. The second thing to consider is how much the offending person is to blame for the incident. Let’s use personal injury compensation claims as an example here.
The hand is a good part of the body to use as an example to show how much compensation can be expected, as it’s made up of different parts. For example, a ‘pincer’ grip is when you hold something between your thumb and index finger. This is important for manipulating objects in your everyday life. Your little finger however, is arguably used less in day to day life and so, from a legal perspective an injury to the little finger would be worth less compensation than if you damaged your thumb and/or index finger.
In personal injury cases, the severity of the injury is also taken into consideration when decided on how much compensation is owed. A multiple break is worth more compensation than a hairline fracture and a cut that requires a few stitches might be worth less than a hairline fracture. To give you an example, in the UK last year the average thumb fracture compensation claim was worth around £2,900 while the average little finger of ‘pinkie’ fracture was worth £1,100.
With other types of compensation claim, a similar pattern follows in gauging how much compensation is owed. If you’ve suffered psychologically at work due to discrimination, then that would be considered a serious case and the compensation would depend on how seriously a psychologist deemed your suffering. If you were fired because of discrimination, then loss of earnings would also be compensated for. With these cases, the blame can be squarely places on someone else’s shoulders too and that is important, as you’ve nothing wrong. In a car accident claim for example, blame is often divided into a percentage. If an incident was 100 per cent the offending drivers fault, then more compensation will be paid.
We hope this article has cleared up some of the mystery surrounding the issue of how much compensation is owed. If you need specialist guidance, contact an expert lawyer via our form at the top right of your screen.
