Head and Brain Injury Claims

If you’ve suffered a brain injury as a result of an accident that wasn’t your fault, our specialist head injury solicitors can help you claim compensation.

Traumatic brain damage or serious brain injury can have long-term effects. Depending upon the severity of the trauma and the part of the brain affected, the effects can be physical, cognitive or psychological.

Our head and brain injury claim expertise

Our personal injury solicitors are highly experienced in supporting people living with head and brain injuries and supporting their loved ones. We can offer the clear, practical and sensitive support you need at this difficult time.

Our brain injury solicitors can guide you through the whole claims process, helping you to get the financial support you need to live as fully and independently as possible after your injury. The majority of claims we handle are settled out of court, saving you time and money and making the claims process easier on you.

Blog | Guide to brain injury and rehabilitation

We will assign you a dedicated solicitor, supported by an experienced team. Together, we will help you establish a personal care support scheme, making sure you have access to all of the support services you need for your recovery.

Before you make a decision about starting a claim for a head or brain injury, we will offer a ‘no win, no fee’ consultation with a member of our Personal Injury team. This is to discuss your options and how best to fund your claim. We want you to have complete confidence in our team when you work with us.

We are able to offer no win, no fee head and brain injury claims, so there is no need for you to make any payment upfront to start a claim.

Get in touch with our brain injury solicitors today

Our specialist brain injury solicitors work with clients all over the UK from our offices spread across Bristol and the surrounding area in Bedminster, Bishopston, Bristol city centre, Kingswood and Thornbury.

To discuss a potential brain or head injury compensation claim with a member of our team, call 0117 325 2929 or complete our online enquiry form.

Why choose Barcan+Kirby?

Our personal injury solicitors act for clients throughout the UK on a wide range of head and brain injury  claims, including the most high value and complex claims.

We are accredited by the Law Society for Personal Injury law and are on the approved brain injury solicitors list of leading UK brain injury charity, Headway. Our solicitors are also associated with the Brain Injury Group, a national network of dedicated brain injury lawyers.

The top client guides to the legal profession recognise our team as leading personal injury lawyers. We have achieved band 3 ranking by Chambers and Partners UK and tier 3 ranking for the South West by Legal 500.

Where necessary, our brain injury specialists work with a range of external experts, including medical experts, barristers, costs lawyers and charities.

Brain injury FAQs

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 21st 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.

Our brain injury claims success stories

Seven-figure lump sum and annual payments for brain injury following motorcycle accident

We secured a seven-figure lump sum and annual payments totalling a six-figure sum over 10 years for a client left with a serious brain injury following a motorcycle accident.

The defendant initially denied full liability. However, after a meeting between both parties and with the support of our legal team, we were able to agree on an out-of-court settlement.

This settlement covered the immediate impact on the client, as well as consideration for lost future income the client would have likely earned as a partner in a commercial law firm.

Read more

Seven-figure pre-trial settlement for severe head and brain injury after fall onto concrete

We represented a client who suffered a severe head and brain injury after an accident at work. The accident left her with a range of physical, cognitive and mental health issues.

Our team initiated court proceedings, but the defendant then admitted liability. We negotiated a seven-figure settlement to cover our client’s pain, suffering and financial losses, as well as the future financial impact of her injuries.

Read more

Support for brain injuries

Barcan+Kirby is proud to be associated with the Brain Injury Group, a national network of dedicated brain injury lawyers and other specialist brain injury services.

The Brain Injury Group provides a gateway to information and advice for brain-injured people, their families and carers. Members of the Brain Injury Group are able to offer access to a complete package of support.

We are also on Headway’s approved solicitors list in recognition of our exceptional skill in handling brain injury claims. They offer information and support to help improve life for people who have experienced a brain injury. They also offer a Brain Injury Identity Card, which helps others to accommodate those living with a brain injury.

Start a head or brain injury claim today

We offer a ‘no-win, no-fee’ consultation to talk about your options and how best to fund your head or brain injury claim.

Our lawyers work with clients all over the UK from our offices spread across Bristol and the surrounding area in Bedminster, Bishopston, Bristol city centre, Kingswood and Thornbury.

To discuss a potential head or brain injury claim with a member of our team, call 0117 325 2929 or complete our online enquiry form.

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    • "Jay is an absolute credit to Barcan+Kirby. She deserves major recognition for all the hard work she does in ensuring cases are brought to a successful conclusion."
      Chambers and Partners UK 2024
    • "Claire is very organised and good with complex cases. She's very claimant-centred and she listens and takes on suggestions."
      Chambers and Partners 2024
    • "Fiona's skill set lends itself to clients who need an extra helping hand with the process. She's able to explain matters in simple terms, which is important for clinical negligence work."
      Chambers and Partners 2024
    • “Myfanwy is a calm and reassuring solicitor.”
      Chambers and Partners 2023
    • “It is a very efficient team and they are good communicators.”
      Chambers and Partners 2023