Head and Brain Injury Claims

When working out how much compensation you are entitled to, there are various factors to consider to make sure you get the full amount available.

Our head and brain injury solicitors can advise you of all of the damages you may potentially be entitled to, including:

• Medical and care costs: this includes any fees you have had to pay for private medical treatment, rehabilitation services, private carers and other types of support required due to your injuries. It can also cover any expected future costs of this nature.
• Specialist equipment and home adaptions: where you need to buy any equipment or pay for adaptations to your home or vehicle to accommodate the effects of your injuries.
• Pain and suffering: including both physical and emotional pain.
• Lifestyle changes: such as having to give up hobbies you previously enjoyed due to the effects of your brain injury.
• Loss of earnings: if your injury means you’re unable to work or work at a reduced level, we’ll ensure that loss of earnings and job prospects are taken into account when negotiating your settlement.

Of course, no amount of damages can adequately compensate you for the potentially devastating effects of a serious brain or head injury. But, damages can help you regain your independence and access the level of care and support you need to enable you to lead as normal a life as possible.

A common concern for clients is how they will pay for the essential rehabilitation services and other types of support they or their loved one need while their claim is ongoing.

In many cases, we can secure interim payments from the defendant to cover these costs while your claim is being dealt with. An interim payment is a sum of money paid to you from the compensation ‘pot’ before a settlement is reached to provide financial relief and support. This means you will not miss out on the help you or your loved one needs to make the best possible recovery.

The first step is to book a no-win, no-fee initial consultation with our personal injury team. You can then explain your situation to us and we can give you our opinion on how likely we think you are to be able to secure compensation.

We will then discuss your legal options with you and how the claims process works. At this point, we will also take you through the various options for funding your claim, including a no win, no fee deal, and discuss the likely timescales for the various stages of the claims process.

The length of time taken to secure brain injury compensation depends on the severity of your injuries. If the effects are likely to be long-lasting, you will be advised not to settle too quickly. This will give us a chance to assess your recovery and what issues you may be left with for the long term so that we can ensure that you are fully compensated for these.

During the time that it takes to deal with your case, we can request interim payments so that you have financial support in the meantime.

A brain injury is when the brain is hurt in some way that might cause physical, cognitive or psychological issues. By way of example, if the head suffers an impact, there could be swelling or bleeding of the brain with resulting headaches or more severe symptoms.

A traumatic brain injury is generally caused by an impact to the head, such as falling and hitting a hard surface, something falling and hitting the head or a car accident sustained at speed. It can also happen due to other factors, such as a bleed on the brain.

Medical records will establish brain damage. The time following a brain injury can be roughly divided into three time periods and you will be seen by medical experts throughout each of these.

1. The first period, immediately after the incident, is likely to include lower levels of consciousness and in some cases unconsciousness. More severe injuries will result in a coma.
2. The second stage generally involves some loss of memory, often referred to as post-traumatic amnesia, which can include having no memory of things happening in the present as well as the past.
3. The third stage is the period of recovery, which can be months or years long. This is when the long-term symptoms of the incident will be apparent. These symptoms vary person-to-person but can include tiredness, a change in their personality, a loss of senses, e.g. taste and smell, and general confusion. If you are going through a brain injury claim, the medical examinations carried out at various stages will assess how your recovery is progressing and may also provide recommendations for treatment. Medical reports will be prepared by independent experts that will form the basis of evidence in your case.

Other medical records will also be used to prove the extent of your injury, such as CT scans, MRI scans and reports prepared by specialists such as speech and language therapists.

Your case will also include evidence of what happened, as we will need to prove that your injury was caused by a particular event and that the defendant was responsible for this event. Examples of evidence include police reports, work accident reports, witness statements, video footage and photographs.

The majority of our personal injury clients work with us on a no win, no fee basis, more formally known as a ‘conditional fee agreement’. This means that you do not pay us anything to start a claim for you and you only have to contribute towards our fees if we secure compensation for you.

The key benefits of this are that it means there is no financial risk to you in starting a claim and you do not have to worry about whether you can afford our fees.

Depending on the circumstances, there can be other options for funding a claim that may be appropriate. These include legal expenses insurance, as well as trade union funding for workplace brain injuries.

Read more about ways to fund a personal injury claim.

If our brain injury specialists do not win compensation for you, you won’t owe us anything in respect of our time. Where we do win damages for you, our fee will be based on a percentage of those damages, so you will always keep the majority of any compensation.

For most types of personal injury claims, there is a standard time limit of three years from the date of the accident to claim compensation. However, this time limit does not necessarily apply to many types of brain injury claims.

This is because the three-year time limit only applies if the claimant is considered to have the ‘mental capacity’ to bring a claim. Where the claimant is judged not to have mental capacity, there is no time limit for someone else to bring a claim on their behalf.

Because brain injuries often affect mental capacity, there is often effectively no time limit for bringing a brain injury claim but the situation with be assessed on a case-by-case basis. However, you will need to apply to a judge to determine if the claimant has mental capacity, so it is important to do this as soon as possible.

Other situations where the standard three-year time limit may not apply are:

• If the claimant was under 18 at the time of the accident. Their parents or guardians can bring a claim until the claimant turns 18. The claimant can then bring their own claim until their 21^st birthday.
• If you need to claim for a fatal head or brain injury. Then you will have three years to claim from the date of your loved one’s death.

Whilst our head injury solicitors are working on your claim, we’ll ensure you have access to the ongoing rehabilitation care and expert support you may need in order to try and make the best possible recovery from your injuries.

Our solicitors will also seek interim payments from the other party.

We know how difficult it can be to come to terms with a serious brain injury, so we’ll refer you to support organisations outside the legal process. As far as possible, we want to assist in returning you to your pre-injury lifestyle and guide you to achieve those goals.

We work closely with Headway, a charity providing help and information to those affected by head and brain injuries, and recommend that you contact them for guidance.

In almost all cases, we are able to secure compensation for head and brain injuries through an out-of-court settlement with the party responsible for your injuries. This allows you to avoid the stress and uncertainty of court proceedings and usually allows the process to go much faster and with lower legal fees.

Where the defendant will not admit liability, or they dispute the level of liability or damages, it may be necessary for us to initiate court proceedings on your behalf. In such cases, the defendant is still very likely to agree to a pre-trial settlement, so it is very rare that you would need to attend court.

However, if a court hearing is required, we will be with you every step of the way. Our team will ensure that you have the very best legal advice and representation, as well as the empathetic personal support you need for every stage of court proceedings.

You may wish to consider putting any compensation you receive into a personal injury trust. This allows you to use the money but ring-fences it so it will not be considered as part of your assets for any means-tested benefits you rely on or may need to rely on in future.

We can also act as professional Court of Protection deputies where a loved one has been left without the mental capacity to manage their own affairs following a brain injury. This means we can ensure your loved one’s compensation is managed in their best interests.

Our team cannot advise you on the investment of damages but can refer you to relevant experts to provide you guidance and support in dealing with the compensation received.