Personal Injury Claims.No-Win/No Fee

When a person has suffered injury or loss through the fault of another, a claim for compensation by way of damages can be made. Common examples are road and work place accident injury, medical negligence claims, tripping cases.

If a member of your family has died due to an accident you may be able to claim for compensation under a Fatal Accidents claim.

If you were injured as the result of a criminal assault, compensation can be claimed under the Criminal Injuries Act

If the accident was partly your fault, then this may reduce the damages that you receive. The compensation will be reduced on a percentage basis according to what percentage of the blame is attributed you. This is known as contributory negligence.

Claims must be brought within 3 years of the accident which gives rise to the claim. The only exceptions are:

* Where a Claimant is under 18 when the accident happened. In this case the 3 years only starts to run from when he reaches 18.
* At the time of the accident the Claimant did not know that he had been injured or that the injury was caused by an accident, illness or disease. Even if this is years later, the three years will not start to run until the time the injury was discovered.

Where this limitation period is missed, the Court has power to allow the claim to proceed. It will however consider any prejudice to the Defendant before exercising its discretion.
A claim will effectively have two parts.

Firstly there is the question of liability, and any ‘contributory negligence’ on your part. It will be necessary to show that the Defendant has been negligent, and that this negligence led directly to the injury and loss you have suffered. Once negligence has been established, the second stage is to prove the loss, and decide the compensation or damages payable.

The damages will consist of an amount for pain and suffering, and for ‘loss of amenity’. This is an amount for the change in lifestyle that may have been caused by the accident, such as being unable to enjoy your favourite sport.

You may also be able to claim for monetary expenses caused by the accident. These are known as Special Damages and will include loss of earnings, traveling expenses to hospital, medical costs and in a motoring accident, the cost of car repair.

Calculating Special Damages is largely a case of listing all the expenses flowing from the accident, so it is important to keep receipts and a careful record. General damages for pain and suffering may depend upon a medical report. If there is any continuing pain and suffering or long lasting injury the amount of damages will be more. The amount is largely calculated by looking at awards made in similar cases.

When liability is agreed, but [as is often the case], the amount of damages is in dispute, or can not be finalised pending further medical evidence, an interim payment may be made.

If you receive social security benefits because of the injury and then win the case, you will have to pay back to the DSS some of the benefits received.

There is a special protocol which applies to personal injury cases, and must be followed before commencing Court Proceedings. This involves full disclosure of your claim and supporting medical evidence to the Defendant, to allow them the opportunity to settle and thereby avoid Court Costs.

No-Win/No Fee

The term 'no win no fee' is used extensively and it can relate to a number of quite different agreements.
Generally 'no win no fee' is used in the context of conditional fee agreements (cfas). Under such agreements, if you win your case, you must pay your solicitor's fees and any expenses for items such as experts' reports and barrister's or other solicitor's opinions. These are known as disbursements. If you lose, you need pay no fees to your solicitor. However, you may have to pay your opponent's legal costs and both sides' disbursements. Conditional fees are subject to regulations which set out what a solicitor must tell the client. A solicitor who does not abide by the regulations runs the risk of not getting paid at all, win or lose.

No win/no fee is simply an agreement that you will not be charged a fee if you do not recover any damages. If you do win damages you agree will agree that you will pay a success fee. The success fee is a percentage increase in the basic fee.

If a Claimant loses, it is likely that he will have to pay the Defendants costs. To cover these it will be necessary to take out insurance against the risk.

In the case of success, costs to include the success fee and insurance premium may be recoverable.

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