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Children and mental patients are regarded as persons under a legal disability and are therefore exempt from the three year time limit.

A person is treated as under a disability if he is an infant or of unsound mind. A person is of unsound mind if he is a person who, by reason of a mental disorder, is not capable of managing or administering his property and affairs.

It is not necessary for the person making the accident claim to have been a formal or informal mental patient but, if this is the case, he is conclusively presumed to be of unsound mind.

The three year time limit begins to run for people under a disability only when a child reaches the age of 18 or, for a person of unsound mind, from the time when he becomes capable of managing or administering his property or affairs.

If a disability starts after the accident which caused the injury, it does not interfere with the three year time limit. For example, if a person becomes of unsound mind after the accident which caused him injuries, the three year time limit will apply.

High volume of personal injury claims increased insurance premiums up by 22 per cent at elephant.co.uk and Diamond insurance company. These two companies are in the Admiral group of insurance companies.

Admiral insurance reported a leap in pre-tax half-year profits of £126.9 million partly due to the increase in car insurance premiums that went up because of the high numbers of personal injury claims.

The total written premiums by the Admiral group was £556 million in Britain.

In the case of Majrowski against Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust, an employee of the Trust Mr. Majrowski succeeded in his stress at work personal injury claim against the hospital. His case was that he had been harassed by his manager and the hospital was found to be responsible for its failure to protect him from work-related stress that he suffered as a result of the harassment.

Work related stress injury is increasing and the number of stress at work personal injury claims is going up.

In 2008, Channel 4 website hosted an expert debate on the issue of “Is stress a myth?” Dr. Rob Briner from London University suggested that the problem is that: “What we are saying is effectively meaningless because… there is no medical condition or set of symptoms that can be described as, or define stress.” [Stress is actually] “… an extremely wide term referring to a huge range of different feelings, symptoms and situations.”

Disagreeing with Dr. Briner, Stress –management consultant Roger Mead, explained that human stress is, “an individual response to perceived pressure” and stated that, “Individuals who are stressed will have their own understanding of what it means.”

According to research, high job demand is likely to increase the risk of major clinical depression or generalised anxiety disorder in people with no previous history of these complaints. Employers have a duty to ensure that their employees are protected from work-related stress.

If you have suffered a stress at work injury, you may be entitled to claim compensation.

If you are a nurse and have suffered injuries to your back or you experienced pain while lifting or attempting to move a patient at a hospital you may be entitled to compensation.

For your claim to be successful, you will need to show that the hospital failed to take certain steps to prevent your injuries.

In one case against a hospital, Mrs Web was injured when with a Sister she endeavoured to move a patient who weighed approximately 22 stone and suffered from senile dementia. During the course of the lifting, Mrs Web's back was injured.

On three other occasions, Mrs Web was engaged in moving another patient who was extremely heavy together with other heavy patients as a result of which the injury to Mrs Web's back was made worse.

In Court, Mrs Web was able to prove that her back injury was caused by the negligence of her employer, the hospital and she was awarded substantial compensation.

The Court agreed with Mrs Web that the accident had occurred because the hospital had failed to maintain a safe system of work and had failed to provide appropriate mechanical hoist equipment to move patients. The hospital had also failed to provide enough numbers of strong staff to move patients.

Mrs Web convinced the court that her employer, the hospital had failed to take action when she and her colleagues made complaints about the weight of the patients and about the lack of lifting equipment.

If you contracted tenosynovitis at work stand your ground for Compensation.

Balinda & Co have successfully won a compensation claim for a lady who suffered tenosynovitis from bagging chickens on a conveyor belt in a chicken packing room.

Our client contracted tenosynovitis from cropping, drawing and removing the lungs of chickens in the E.V Room, and then later recontracted tenosynovitis from packing chickens in the packing department.

During the personal injury claim we were up against tough defence from her employers’ insurers, who in our opinion were offering a settlement which in our view was far too low for an occupational disease compensation claim – yet they would not increase their offer.

The employers’ insurer’s had already admitted that the tenosysynovitis disease was caused by the employers fault and our client’s medical records showed that many aspects of her life had been affected by her tenosynvitis.

Our client suffered pain and swelling in her wrist. She had been treated by a variety of means. She required surgery. She continued to suffer pain and discomfort in her wrist. She had difficulty in carrying out her domestic work. She could not wash, wring out or hang up her clothing. She could not knit and dressmake as before and she had difficulty doing her hair.

Our client was reluctant to take her claim to trial. She was prepared to accept the small amount her employers’ insurers had offered. However, Balinda & Co know that many insurance companies rely on many people not going to trial. Insurance companies use compensation claim calculation systems which are not recognised by the Courts and which always produce compensation claim figures which are far too low for the injuries suffered.

Many people are discouraged from going ahead to trial to claim the compensation they rightfully deserve. But we persuaded our client to go ahead with her tenosysynovitis compensation claim – illness that is still causing her pain and discomfort 3 years after leaving her job..

By standing her ground our client was awarded substantial compensation much more than what the insurance company had offered her.

Balinda & Co would urge you to stand firm, get in touch and let our occupational disease experts fight and win the compensation you deserve by going to trial, and not giving in.

Pollution affects the lives of millions of people and cause death, illness and disease.

Environmental pollution results from the contamination by chemical or radioactive substances that renders the air, land, sea and rivers unfit for their natural use.

Environmental pollution claims also covers contamination caused by the use of pesticides and chemicals in the environment.

The starting point for an environmental pollution claim is that you suffered the illness or disease as an innocent victim whose only link with the cause of the pollution was that the pollution occurred where you live, work or have a parent who was exposed to a toxic substance.

Environmental pollution claims are complex, the illness or disorder may not be obviously linked to a particular pollutant. You may not realise that your illness has been caused by environmental pollution and your may neither know nor explain the cause of your illness.

Increasing amounts of public funding have been put into epidemiological (study of the causes of illness through the use of statistics) studies in the understanding of the patterns of cancers like leukaemia.

In most claims involving environmental pollution, the victims will have suffered a great deal of pain and stress.

How to prove your Environmental Pollution Claim:

You will have to prove that the particular pollutant emanating from a particular source caused your specific illness, injury or disorder.

Your environmental pollution lawyer will have to provide biological evidence from experiments conducted in your type of illness to establish the cause.

Where there is epidemiological evidence, showing a statistical association between the exposure and increased risk of injury in question, this will usually need to be supported by biological evidence. You may need to refer to that evidence to demonstrate a plausible mechanism and to prove that the level of exposure (i.e. dose) was more likely than not the cause of your injury or disorder.

Epidemiological evidence will be of great assistance if it can show a correlation. One of the reasons for this is that the epidemiologists by convention require a relationship to be statistically significant before they will say that such a relationship or correlation is real. Although epidemiological evidence does not constitute biological proof of causation, in the absence of contradictory biological evidence, statistical evidence may constitute proof of legal causation.

If you have suffered illness or disease as a result of pollution, you may be entitled to claim compensation.

When you make a personal injury claim you may hear certain terms being used which you would not normally hear in general speech or may never have heard.

In this blog I will explain some terms to you that may help you understand the process of your personal injury claim. Don’t worry, if you don’t remember everything, you can not be expected to know all the jargon, but it is helpful to have an idea of some so that you can find it easy to communicate with your personal injury lawyer.

Injuries

When you are involved in an accident you could suffer various types of injuries. A lot of injuries encountered are orthopaedic (bone) injuries. Some jargon that may be used in a medical report is as follows.

a) Arthrodesis – this means a joint has been fused either due to a pre-existing joint disease or as a result of trauma to the joint.

b) Contusion – this is when there is an injury to the skin and deeper tissues accompanied by bleeding of damaged blood vessels but with no break of the skin.

c) Clavicle – this is your collar bone.

d) Dislocation – this is when the bones of a joint are out of alignment or have become disconnected from one another.

 
e) Fracture – this is when there is a break in the continuity of the bone.

 
f) Scaphoid cast – this is a cast which covers the arm from below the elbow up to the start of the fingers.

g) Scipher spica cast – this is basically body jacket covering the trunk, shoulder and elbow.

h) Whiplash - whiplash neck sprain is when your head is suddenly jolted backwards and forwards in a whip-like movement.


Medical Experts

In order to claim for injuries sustained, you need to obtain a medical report. Your injury solicitor will do that for you by instructing a medical expert. A medical expert will arrange an appointment with you during which the expert will discuss details of the accident and details of the injuries that were sustained. The medical expert will also have access to your past medical history in order to ascertain if you had any previous condition that is relevant. For example, if you had a history of a bad back and you sustained an injury to your back in the accident, the medical expert will need to mention the fact that the accident had caused an aggravation to the previously existing back problem.

The medical report will detail the type of injury suffered, the effect it had you and your life in general, for how long the injury is likely to last and if any further medical treatment or referral is needed.

The kind of medical expert your injury lawyer would instruct depends on the type of injury you sustained. A list of some of the experts used are as follows.

a) General Practitioner – A lot of the time a Claimant does not suffer very serious injury or sometimes it may not appear that they have suffered a very serious injury. In those circumstances you would instruct a General Practitioner to examine and prepare a report. This is normally done in straight forward road traffic accident where a Claimant is complaining of a stiff neck or aching back for example. If the General Practitioner believes that the Claimant has suffered a more serious injury he will state in his report that the Claimant needs to be referred to another expert – for example an Orthopaedic surgeon if a whiplash injury is causing particular problems.

b) Orthopaedic surgeon – an Orthopaedic surgeon will be instructed if the Claimant has suffered a fracture, or some kind of bone injury. Orthopaedic surgeons are also sometimes used when a Claimant has suffered a more serious whiplash or back injury.

c) Neuro-surgeon – A Neuro-surgeon is instructed if a Claimant suffered a serious head injury, for example a brain injury.

d) Plastic Surgeon – A plastic surgeons is instructed if a Claimant has suffered a burn injury or if he has suffered an injury that has lead to serious scarring.

e) Dentist / Dental surgeon – If a Claimant has sustained broken teeth or any other type of inner mouth injury a Dentist or Dental surgeon will need to be instructed depending on how serious the injury is.

f) Psychologist – A Claimant may have suffered some psychological trauma as a result of the accident or as a direct result of the injury; in that case a Psychologist would be instructed to examine him and prepare a report.

Asiimwe Balinda

Personal Injury Solicitor

In thinking about making a personal injury claim, if your injuries were serious, you need to think about what things you need for the short term and what things you want for the long term. Just as important as defining your personal needs and desires, you should also make it your task to become informed about your rights and duties of making a personal injury claim in the UK. Until you know what you can get under the law, you won’t know if your expectations about the end-result of your claim are realistic and reasonable.

The Balinda & Co website provides all the basic information you should have about your rights and your obligations under the UK personal injury law. A number of sources, including you yourself, will provide you with other tools to help you define your needs and expectations. Identifying your goals will tell you what you wish to achieve. This website, used together perhaps with other professional advice, can then help you map out how to accomplish those goals.

Your Short-term and long-term needs

Sometimes a person’s short-term and long-term needs overlap, as they are but different versions of one central underlying concern. For example, you want and need to maintain financial stability, for yourself and for your family, both now and in the future. But how you achieve the short-term objective of preserving your financial balance may be different from how you preserve your balance over the longer term. In the midst of the great upheaval and distress you could feel over a serious personal injury, you may need to locate a suitable therapist without delay. That will be your immediate objective, with the short-term goal of getting focused professional assistance during a period of extreme pain and anxiety. Longer term, you may need to establish a new exercise or work regimen to provide you with ongoing relief from continuing stresses. Either way, you are planning for your future. It’s just that one part of the plan applies to the near future and the other part to the more distant future.

The same can pretty much be said of all the needs you identify for yourself. You will be developing concrete ideas about what to do to address those concerns now and what to do about those same or similar needs over a period of years. If you find it too hard to identify all your needs, ask someone to help you do that. Similarly, if you can’t quite figure out the best ways to set short- and long-term objectives for yourself, get someone to help you. This website, books, and discussions with friends and professionals can provide you with plenty of ideas and help you rank your priorities.

The need to keep an open mind

At the same time, you should keep an open mind. In extreme pain and distress, you might be thinking about taking your life. As you think more about your urge to commit suicide, however, you should come to see that you will hurt yourself more by holding onto the past. Playing out your anger at or disappointment with yourself will almost surely reduce the chances for recovery.

One main premise of this website is that you should be aware of all your legal entitlements when you have suffered serious injuries in an accident that was not your fault. If you focus too much on immediate compensation, you will be disserving long-term goals of your emotional stability and financial security. If you keep a cool head and plan your future life with carefully thought out objectives, you will be creating for yourself, as best you can possibly do, the kind of life that you want and deserve. You will, in short, be mapping out the best possible outcome for your personal injury claims process.

Asiimwe Balinda

Personal injury solicitor

A new generation of car accident claims fraudsters is responsible for a sharp rise in car insurance premiums.

The type of scams carried out by the fraudsters often involve groups of drivers agreeing to stage 'cash for crash' accidents and then splitting the proceeds of any payout. One of the most common frauds involves personal injury claims, such as inventing whiplash injuries or exaggerating the effect of a minor car accident.

'Cash for crash' frauds also include the 'slam on' scam where a driver brakes suddenly at a roundabout or junction, causing the innocent driver behind to crash into the vehicle.

In many cases, the first car is filled with passengers, who all claim for exaggerated injuries. The fraudsters then also claim for the cost of repair or replacement of their vehicle on the innocent driver's insurance.

One of such car insurance claims happened when best friends Katie Ashcroft, 24, and Jodie Jackman, 23, arranged for a 'Mr Fixit' to crash their cars into each other before ringing their insurance companies to falsely claim they had been in a car accident. Friends and family also falsely claimed to have been passengers in the cars and made claims for personal injury compensation to back up their story.

But the scam was exposed after 23 year old Ms Jackman, an administrative clerk, was suspended from her job with the Probation Service and managers accessed her e-mail account.

The AA has revealed that the average comprehensive policy has rocketed by more than 30 % over the last year from £538 to £704 and warns that the rise is likely to continue.

Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, said he won’t be surprised if, by the end of 2010, we'll have witnessed a 50% rise in car insurance in just two years.'

In addition to the cost of second hand cars and rising fuel prices, the rise in car insurance is discouraging news for motorists.

The knock on effect on motorists who are genuinely involved in accidents is that they are being encouraged to submit inflated claims by some lawyers whose large bills are also contributing to the rise in the insurance costs.

This news has raised concern that the number of uninsured drivers will rise, as motorists will decide not to pay the premium. The Association of British Insurers said it was "possible" the rises in the cost of insurance could lead to more uninsured drivers taking to the roads, but uninsured drivers are more likely to be caught thanks to advancements in number plate recognition technology which alert police when a vehicle is    uninsured.

Currently around one million motorists do not have insurance. This is thought to cost insurers around £500 million a year.

Ability

A charity that provides healthy living, leisure and learning resources focused on the inclusion of people with special needs arising from disabilities, long term sickness or mental health problems

Ability Net

AbilityNet is a charity that brings the benefits of computer technology to adults and children with disabilities

BASIC

BASIC is a charity attached to Greater Manchester Neuroscience Centre at Hope Hopspital. Basic provides counselling, information and support services for patients and their families following a brain or spinal injury

BISWG - Brain Injury Social work Group


The Brain Injury Social Work Group (BISWG) is a Special Interest Group affiliated to the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). It is a group for social work professionals and affiliates aiming to raise the standards of social work practice and other relevant specialist services in supporting people with a brain injury, their families and carers.

HeadWay - Brian Injury Association

Headway is a charity set up to give help and support to people affected by brain injury. They do this in a number of ways:
A network of local Headway Groups and Branches throughout the UK offers a wide range of services, including rehabilitation programmes, carer support, social re-integration, community outreach and respite care. The services available will vary, depending on local needs and resources.

Disabled Living Foundation

The Disabled Living Foundation is a national UK Charity. It is their vision to provide the best possible choice for people who use equipment to live a more independent life.


London – the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service

London – the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service based at the Royal London Hospital in London’s East End – is unique in being able to get a specialist doctor to the scene of an accident within minutes. They are therefore able to treat the patient in the so-called ‘golden hour’ – the time immediately after an accident when their chances of survival are highest.

Motability

Motability is a national UK charity, which helps disabled people and their families to become more mobile. It was set up on the initiative of the Government in 1977, to provide vehicles and powered wheelchairs to disabled people.

NICE - The National Institute for Clinical Excellence

NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health.

Queen Elizabeths Foundation

QEF works with people living with physical and learning disabilities or acquired brain injuries to gain new skills and increase independence. Whether it’s learning everyday life skills, rebuilding a life affected by brain injury, acquiring the skills to drive a specially adapted car or training for future employment QEF supports disabled people to achieve goals for life.

The Foundation has worked with disabled people for over sixty five years and pride themselves upon thus continued programme of expansion and development that ensures that their disability services are relevant to meet today's needs.

The Calvert Trust

The Calvert Trust specialises in outdoor activities for disabled people.

The neurological Alliance North East

The Neurological Alliance is a wide range of neurological charities and stakeholders, which have come together to make life better for people in the Tees Valley, Durham and North Yorkshire areas with a neurological condition.

The Simon Paul Foundation

The Simon Paul Foundation is a UK based registered charity supporting severely physically disabled young people who wish to live independent lives in the community

UKABIF

The UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum. A campaigning organisation bringing together all those with an interest in head injury, to share information, campaigning ideas + raise awareness of brain injury.

Wheelchair Users Group

Wheelchair Users Group - Is run by a group of wheelchair users to represent the views and opinions of its members, both at national and local levels. The charity runs a support helpline, provides a comprehensive information service, a quarterly news magazine and a loan equipment scheme, providing electric scooters and wheelchairs to members in need.

Whizz-Kidz

Whizz-Kidz is a national children's charity with a very simple goal - to give disabled children independent mobility. 

By providing them with mobility equipment, training, advice and life skills, Whizz Kidz actually gives children something much more important; the independence to be themselves. They make an immediate and life changing difference to their lives and their families.