It’s a sad fact that in this claim-centric culture of ours, if someone is involved in an accident they may claim compensation for a whiplash injury even if they aren’t injured at all. Those dishonest people see a car accident as a fortuitous way to get some easy money and all they have to do, it seems, is complain that their neck hurts, see a few specialists and hire a personal injury lawyer.
Such bogus claims cost the insurance industry billions of pounds, which ultimately gets passed on to the rest of us through inflated insurance premiums. What’s worse, though, is that people who have genuinely suffered a whiplash injury tend not to be believed – medical professionals and members of the public are so jaded by fake claims that they tend to assume that the injury and pain are not real.
However, anyone who has ever suffered a true whiplash injury can tell you just how painful and debilitating they can be – and how much they deserve the compensation for their pain and suffering and out-of-pocket expenses. Some employers even have contracts that say that if someone else is at fault for an employee missing work then the employee must seek compensation to repay their sick pay to their employers.
For genuine sufferers of whiplash, the level of compensation received can be below what they truly deserve, because insurance companies are accustomed to offering relatively low settlement figures knowing that few people will be prepared to go to court to demand more money (especially if their claim isn’t true). Solicitors and lawyers dealing with personal injury cases can also fail to take this type of injury seriously and not handle the claim as well as they could.
That’s why, if you’ve suffered whiplash, you need to choose your injury lawyer carefully. To make a claim for injury compensation you need a Solicitor with plenty of experience in this field and one who comes recommended by their clients. For this type of claim you should also expect to be helped on a ‘No Win, No Fee’ basis, which means that if you win your opponent will pay your compensation and both sides’ legal and court costs, whereas if you lose you won’t pay your lawyer anything and an insurance policy will pay the costs of the other party.
If you choose the right personal injury lawyer and get the right agreement in place to secure a no win, no fee funding arrangement then your claim for compensation for whiplash should progress well. You will need to see medical professionals who may be independent or who may be hired by the other party’s solicitors to test whether or not you are telling the truth about your injury. Ultimately, if the other party won’t accept that they were at fault and caused you to suffer an injury then you will have to go to court and convince a judge that your pain and suffering is genuine.
More and more insurance companies are hiring private investigators to test the veracity of a claim for whiplash, following claimants around and taking photographs of them doing things that they have claimed that they are physically incapable of doing. Remember, though, that an honest person has nothing to fear, and seek advice as soon as you can if you suffer a whiplash injury. You have a maximum of three years in which to put in a claim at court before you won’t be allowed to – and you’ll need to have followed a pre-action protocol before issuing any application at court, which includes writing to the other party to tell them that you have been injured. These things can take time, so the sooner you seek advice after an accident, the better.
If you have been injured in a car accident, you may be entitled to claim for injury. Making a claim with Claim Today Solicitors (CTS); personal injury lawyers could be the first step to receiving compensation on a no win no fee basis and without any deduction from your personal injury claim compensation, leaving you with 100% of your compensation claim.