If you are successful in your claim, you will be awarded damages (compensation) at trial or agree a settlement at some stage in the proceedings.

What is compensation?

Compensation, which we often refer to as “damages”, is money paid to you to attempt to make up for your pain and suffering and for the financial and other losses you may have suffered as a result of your injury.

The successful recovery of compensation is dependent upon you being able to establish liability against your opponent. For further details please see our Proving Your Case page.

How much compensation will I receive?

The amount of compensation you will receive will depend entirely upon your individual circumstances.  Previous cases can be used as a guideline to assess what you are likely to receive for “general damages” (see below). But the true value of the claim will be determined on the facts of your case.

The amount of compensation paid depends on the seriousness of the injury caused by the wrongdoing and the financial losses that you will suffer as a consequence.  Calculating how much the claim is worth is known as ‘quantifying the claim’ or ‘quantum’. We will seek to provide you with an estimate of your claim’s worth once we have completed our initial review of your medical records.

Compensation is generally awarded under three main headings: general, special damages and future losses, which are described below.

General damages – for pain, suffering and loss of amenity

General damages are awarded to compensate you for your pain and suffering and for your inability to do things after your accident that you could do before. The award will be based upon reports obtained from medical experts, which describe the injuries you have suffered, how they have affected you and how they are likely to affect you in the future.

In order to get an idea of the value of general damages, we use the guidelines for damages in Personal Injury cases published by the Judicial Studies Board, which sets out different injuries and the sorts of awards being made for that injury.  The JSB guidelines are a useful starting point for working out what level of compensation you might receive.  In addition, we refer to previous case law where courts have awarded damages for similar types of injuries.

Special Damages

Special damages are awarded to compensate you for financial losses which have been incurred as a direct result of the accident.  The aim of special damages is to put you in the position, financially, that you were before you suffered the injury. Special damages will typically include loss of earnings, travel expenses and the value of care support provided by your family.

It is essential that we, as your lawyers, have all the necessary details of your actual losses so that we can claim them on your behalf.

You can assist greatly from the outset by keeping a record of all of your out-of-pocket expenses and other losses due to your injury.  We set out below in more detail examples of the records and documents you should start collating.  These are as follows: –

Bills and receipt for miscellaneous expenses or information including :-

• Travelling to necessary medical appointments (or car mileage records)
• Medical fees
• Relatives expenses incurred in hospital visiting (or car mileage records)
• Costs of necessary care (or breakdown of time and descriptions of such care provided by relatives)
• Services provided for tasks you are unable to perform due to your injury i.e. decorating, gardening, DIY, etc. (or breakdown of time and description of such services provided by relatives)
• Prescription costs
• Increased home running costs e.g. heating, lighting, laundry etc.
• Special equipment
• Additional clothing requirements

Loss of Earnings

In addition, in order for us to calculate any past and future loss of earnings, you should keep records of your career history.  As an employee you should retain the following: –

• Evidence of past earnings such as payslips, tax assessments, P60’s, P11D’s and correspondence with your employer which identified basic pay, commission, profit share and overtime.
• Details of any actual earnings since the accident including statutory sick pay, company sick pay and remuneration from your employer.
• Future actual employment prospects
• Any amount payable to your employer
• Details of any benefits of any employment such as car, share option schemes and private medical insurance
• Details of any company pension scheme including the rules, pensionable service to date and evidence of any ill health pension and lump sum received since the accident.
• Any evidence you have on career prospects and promotion before the injury
• Earning details of any comparable person still employed by his or her company for the year before the accident and for all subsequent years

Future Losses

Your award may also include an award for future loss.  The need for care, loss of earnings and other expenses can continue beyond the date the claim is settled.  If that is the case, we will need to calculate the financial value in today’s terms of your financial losses extending into the future, possibly for the rest of your life.

Duty to mitigate loss

Although you will be properly compensated for those financial losses which are reasonable and which result from the negligence, you are also under a legal duty to mitigate your loss.  This means that you should do everything you can to keep the losses to a minimum.

For example, if your injury improves to the point when you can return to work but you choose not to do so, you will not be compensated for any loss of earnings beyond the time when you could have gone back to work.

For further information please feel free to call our Medical Negligence team on 0844 800 9860. They will be happy to provide you with as much help as possible.