Head & Brain Injury Claims

Brain Injury FAQs

• How do I make a brain injury claim?

  Every brain injury claim is unique, and we’ll carefully review your case details to ensure we achieve the best results for you. The five main steps for making a claim are:

  1. Get in touch

  For a free, no-obligation chat about your or your child’s claim, contact us on 020 3740 6647
  or use our online brain injury enquiry form.

   

  2. Funding options

  If we think you or your child have a claim, we’ll help determine the best funding arrangements for you, which could include a “no win, no fee” agreement.

  3. Rehabilitation 

  We contact the party likely to be responsible for your claim, to notify them and ask them to consider funding your rehabilitation. We will also explore other rehabilitation options to help you at this stage.

  4. Obtaining records

  We’ll request copies of your or your child’s medical records, GP notes, and accident reports to help us identify the severity of the injury, and its impact on your or your child’s life. This will help us assess whether anyone’s wrongdoing may have caused or worsened the injury.

  5. Expert opinion

  If the records support your claim, we’ll ask medical and/or accident reconstruction experts to prepare reports about the case.

  6. Letter of claim

  Once we have supporting evidence from all experts, we’ll write a formal “letter of claim” to the individual or organisation responsible for causing or worsening the brain injury.

  Find out more about the brain injury claims process.

• Who will pay my legal fees?

  If we think you have a strong claim, we will find a way to fund it for you. The four main funding options available are:

  1. ‘No win, no fee’ agreement, otherwise known as a Conditional Fee Agreement

  2. Legal Expenses insurance

  3. Legal Aid

  4. Paying privately

  Find out more about the funding options available and partner organisations who can help.

• What happens if my claim is successful?

  Protecting your means-tested benefits

  Your financial circumstances change when you receive compensation after becoming seriously injured. This means your means-tested benefits may be at risk. However, you can protect your entitlement to benefits by setting up a personal injury trust. Our specialist brain injury solicitors will be happy to advise you if this is relevant to your circumstances.

  Investment advice

  Investing your compensation requires careful thought and often specialist advice. We can recommend an appropriate adviser to help you, if you’d like to pursue this avenue.

  Rehabilitation

  In many claims for head and brain injury compensation, your current medical situation and future prospects may be improved by receiving appropriate medical treatment including surgery, physiotherapy, counselling or care at the earliest opportunity, rather than waiting for the claim to be concluded. We have arrangements with providers of rehabilitation services to ensure your recovery starts as soon as possible.

• How much brain injury compensation will I receive?

  Brain injuries have serious consequences for both the injured person and their loved ones. No amount of money can ever truly provide adequate compensation for the devastating effects of a severe head injury. However, compensation can help you to manage the consequences by funding much needed care, treatment and therapy, alleviating financial hardship and improving quality of life.

  The amount of compensation you’ll receive depends on the severity of your injury, and the impact it’s had on your personal life and career, and will take into account any financial losses you have suffered.

• What are the time limits?

  There are strict time limits for bringing a claim for brain injury. Typically, you have three years from the date on which the injury occurred to issue a claim in court. If you do not issue your claim in time, you will lose the right to bring your claim altogether.

  In some circumstances, you will be able to bring a claim within three years of the date on which you ought reasonably to have become aware that you had a claim. This ‘date of knowledge’ test is subjective and needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. It is therefore important that you get advice from a specialist solicitor as soon as possible to avoid falling foul of these time limits.

  When bringing a claim on behalf of a child, you have to issue the claim in court before the child’s 21st birthday.

• What can I do if I’m not happy with my solicitor?

  If you’ve already started a claim with another solicitor but are unhappy with the service you’re receiving, you are allowed to change your solicitor without having to justify why. Going through a litigation process is stressful as it is, and you’re fully entitled to move to a different firm if you’re unhappy with your current one, particularly if the relationship of trust and confidence has broken down. If you’d like to discuss moving from your current solicitor firm to a solicitor from Bolt Burdon Kemp, just give us a call or send us a message using our contact form.

  If you decide we could be a better fit for you, we can contact your old solicitor to get all the information we need and transfer your case. You may still need to pay your old solicitors for the time they spent on your claim, but we can help you with this, too. Find out more about this process in our article on the subject.