As part of APIL’s Injury Awareness week, I have been mulling over what it means to make a claim and receive compensation. Ask certain parts of the press and media and they will tell you that it’s all about “winning” cash or getting “a payout”.
What is the reality?
It is a basic principle of personal injury law that the payment of compensation is aimed at putting you back to the position that you would have been, had you not been injured. In some aspects of personal injury law, this is easier to work out and to understand than in others.
Say you have been in a minor car accident. Due to your injuries, you have had two days off work, unpaid, before getting back to normal. The law of compensation says that you are entitled to get those lost wages back from the person who caused your injury.
Where the law gets less clear, however, is where injuries and their effects are more serious, and the ‘ripple effect’ starts to take hold. This is what APIL is talking about this Injury Awareness Week.
Imagine instead of a minor accident, you have been in a truly horrific road traffic accident. You have serious physical and psychological injuries. You will never work again. You need help from your family with day-to-day tasks. The losses to you, your family, your friends and everyone around you start stacking up.
Calculating the appropriate level of damages is now not as straightforward. This is where specialist advice is essential.
You can be compensated for your pain and suffering, also known as solatium here in Scotland. This element is worked out with reference to judicial guidelines and past decided court cases, with interest and inflation taken into account.
You can also be compensated for the help and support that you require from your family, and also for the help that you can no longer provide to them – known under the heading of ‘services’. This is not a time-and-line reimbursement for all time spent and can be tricky to assess.
What about if you need care and support for the future? A prosthetic limb or communication device? Physical, psychological or occupational therapies? Independent expert input will be needed to assess your current condition and likely future prognosis, and these reports can contain costings of treatments and equipment required for life.
Expert evidence can also be crucial in working out lost earnings and lost pension accrual – especially in those injured while still young or who are the family breadwinner.
Going back to the aim of compensation above – money will never change what happened or take away life-changing injuries, but should help to put in place what is needed for life to be a little bit easier.
At Balfour+Manson, we understand that receiving compensation for a life-altering injury or bereavement can carry with it all sorts of difficult feelings and emotions – relief at being financially secure for life, grief at knowing that it will never make up for what has been lost, guilt at spending money acquired through a dreadful loss.
We can help you secure the compensation you are entitled to, and also help you manage your money – either through the services of our Private Client and Property teams, or by putting you in touch with our network of trusted independent advisors.
If you have been injured through no fault of your own and require support, get in touch with us to discuss with one of our specialists.
Home > News + events > Money, Money, Money – how do claims for damages work in Scotland?
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Michaela Guthrie
Money, Money, Money – how do claims for damages work in Scotland?
As part of APIL’s Injury Awareness week, I have been mulling over what it means to make a claim and receive compensation. Ask certain parts of the press and media and they will tell you that it’s all about “winning” cash or getting “a payout”.
What is the reality?
It is a basic principle of personal injury law that the payment of compensation is aimed at putting you back to the position that you would have been, had you not been injured. In some aspects of personal injury law, this is easier to work out and to understand than in others.
Say you have been in a minor car accident. Due to your injuries, you have had two days off work, unpaid, before getting back to normal. The law of compensation says that you are entitled to get those lost wages back from the person who caused your injury.
Where the law gets less clear, however, is where injuries and their effects are more serious, and the ‘ripple effect’ starts to take hold. This is what APIL is talking about this Injury Awareness Week.
Imagine instead of a minor accident, you have been in a truly horrific road traffic accident. You have serious physical and psychological injuries. You will never work again. You need help from your family with day-to-day tasks. The losses to you, your family, your friends and everyone around you start stacking up.
Calculating the appropriate level of damages is now not as straightforward. This is where specialist advice is essential.
You can be compensated for your pain and suffering, also known as solatium here in Scotland. This element is worked out with reference to judicial guidelines and past decided court cases, with interest and inflation taken into account.
You can also be compensated for the help and support that you require from your family, and also for the help that you can no longer provide to them – known under the heading of ‘services’. This is not a time-and-line reimbursement for all time spent and can be tricky to assess.
What about if you need care and support for the future? A prosthetic limb or communication device? Physical, psychological or occupational therapies? Independent expert input will be needed to assess your current condition and likely future prognosis, and these reports can contain costings of treatments and equipment required for life.
Expert evidence can also be crucial in working out lost earnings and lost pension accrual – especially in those injured while still young or who are the family breadwinner.
Going back to the aim of compensation above – money will never change what happened or take away life-changing injuries, but should help to put in place what is needed for life to be a little bit easier.
At Balfour+Manson, we understand that receiving compensation for a life-altering injury or bereavement can carry with it all sorts of difficult feelings and emotions – relief at being financially secure for life, grief at knowing that it will never make up for what has been lost, guilt at spending money acquired through a dreadful loss.
We can help you secure the compensation you are entitled to, and also help you manage your money – either through the services of our Private Client and Property teams, or by putting you in touch with our network of trusted independent advisors.
If you have been injured through no fault of your own and require support, get in touch with us to discuss with one of our specialists.