Personal injury claims solicitors

Our service to our clients includes:

• Free, confidential advice from experienced, specialist solicitors;
• No win no fee conditional fee agreements (CFA);
• Expert handling of every claim - our lawyers have:
  • over 25 years of experience, industry knowledge and serious injury claims expertise; 
  • top-tier ranking by the Legal 500 and Chambers Directory;
  • accreditation/membership of the Law Society’s Personal Injury Panel, APIL (Association of Personal Injury Lawyers), Headway, SIA (Spinal Injuries Association), Major Trauma Group, Cycle Smart;
  • expertise in the most severe and complex injuries;
  • a commitment to help our clients achieve their best recovery through funded rehabilitation;
  • an outstanding track record of successful settlements for clients in difficult/complex cases;
• Interim (advance) payments in appropriate cases, to start making a difference straight away;
• High value settlements which meet our clients’ lifelong needs;
• Ongoing support with:
  •  managing, protecting and accessing compensation funds from our experts in:
    • Court of Protection deputyship;
    • personal injury trusts/special needs trusts;
  •  special educational needs (SEN).

We are committed to achieving the best possible outcomes for our severely injured clients even in the most complex or challenging cases. This enables us to help people whose claims need specialist handling because:

• they have suffered injuries of maximum severity resulting in lifelong disability;
• their injuries are complex or compounded by psychological injury, chronic pain or neurological disability;
• our client needs extensive multi-disciplinary treatment or rehabilitation;
• the circumstances of the accident or nature of the injury are highly sensitive, needing careful handling;
• multiple members of the same family or friendship group were involved or injured in the accident;
• establishing liability for the accident is complicated by circumstances or lack of witness evidence;
• more than one person/organisation’s negligence caused the accident - multiple defendants to the claim;
• someone else caused the accident but our client’s own actions could be regarded as contributory negligence.

A personal injury is an injury to the body. Sometimes the physical injury or the circumstances in which that injury was suffered also leads to a psychiatric or psychological injury. 

When someone is injured as a result of another person or organisation’s breach of their duty of care (negligence), the injured person may be entitled to claim compensation for their injury and its financial consequences. The claim for compensation is made against the person or organisation that was responsible for the injury and is usually met by their insurer. The legal process of claiming compensation for injuries that are caused by negligence is known as a personal injury claim.

Boyes Turner’s personal injury team specialise in claims involving severe or catastrophic injury. Most of our clients have been injured in road traffic accidents (RTAs) and accidents at work.

If you have suffered a serious injury as a result of somebody else’s negligence (breach of their duty of care), we may be able to help you make a claim for compensation.

Depending on the circumstances of your accident and the severity of your injury, we may also be able to help you claim compensation:

• where someone else was responsible for causing the accident but you were also partly to blame
• where your injuries were caused by an untraced driver in a ‘hit and run’; 
• where you were the victim of criminal violence.

You can make a claim on behalf of:

• yourself – for your own injuries;
• an injured child who is under the age of 18 (as their litigation friend);
• an injured adult who does not have mental capacity to claim for themselves (as litigation friend);
• the estate of someone who suffered a fatal injury (as their personal representative/executor);
• for your loss of dependency on someone who suffered fatal injury.

For compensation claims relating to injuries which occurred in England or Wales the general rule is that court proceedings must be issued (formally started) within three years of the date of the injury. In most cases, before a claim can be issued work must be carried out to investigate the claim, notify the defendant and the insurance company against whom the claim is being made and obtain a medical report to support the claim. The sooner you contact us after an injury has occurred, the sooner we can begin to help you, and the better we can investigate and prepare your claim.

Longer time limits apply to children, whose three-year time period only begins to run from the age of 18, meaning that their time limit expires when they reach the age of 21. As with adults, however, the sooner you contact us after your child’s serious injury, the sooner we can start helping the child and obtain financial help via the claim.

Time limits do not apply for those who lack mental capacity. Where an injured person’s mental capacity is uncertain, we work closely with our Court of Protection team to determine whether our client has capacity to bring their own claim. As with other claims, it is always advisable to contact us as soon as possible after the injury, to ensure that evidence can be preserved, rehabilitation started (where needed) and financial help secured via the claim.  

In exceptional circumstances the court may extend the time limit (or limitation deadline), such as in asbestos-related disease claims where it was not known that an injury had occurred until after the deadline for making the claim.

If the injury occurred in an accident abroad [link to the new accidents abroad page when Kim has approved it], the law of the country where the accident happened will determine the time limit for making a claim. These time limits vary from country to country and can be much shorter than the deadlines in England and Wales. If you have suffered a serious injury that was not your fault whilst working, travelling, studying or on holiday abroad, you should contact us for advice straight away.

If you or someone in your family have suffered a serious injury in an accident which was caused by someone else’s negligence, you may be entitled to claim compensation. Accidents leading to injury can occur in many situations where negligent mistakes are made. To speak to one of our experienced solicitors, free and confidentially about whether you can claim, you can contact us here.

Common causes of serious injury claims include:

• road traffic accident (RTA) causing injury to:
  • drivers in vehicle collisions;
  • passengers;
  • pedestrians; 
  • motorcyclists; 
  • cyclists; 
• accidents at work;
• falls, slips and trips;
• exposure to asbestos; 
• accidents in schools; 
• accidents abroad;
• sporting accidents;
• accidents in public buildings and facilities;
• faulty or defective products;

criminal injuries (CICA claims)

Our personal injury lawyers are specialists in catastrophic and severe injury compensation claims. Our clients have often suffered life-changing injury resulting in permanent disability. Our aim is to assist their recovery by securing funded rehabilitation whilst supporting them in adjusting to the  changes to their lives and securing compensation to meet their needs in the future.

Our clients usually have suffered one or more of the following:

• head injury/brain injury; 
• spinal cord injury (SCI) - paralysis, tetraplegia, paraplegia;
• loss of limbs or amputation;
• major trauma /multiple injuries;
• fractures (broken bones) - spinal fractures, skull fractures, maxillofacial injury;
• asbestos-related disease;
• musculo-skeletal injury;
• blindness, deafness or sensory impairment;
• nerve injury;
• electrocution, burns or scalds;
• chronic pain conditions, such as CRPS;
• degloving injuries (needing skin grafting);
• scarring and disfigurement;
• stab wounds and severe lacerations;
• psychological injury, such as PTSD;
• internal injuries, such as damage to organs;
• fatal injury/death.

The amount of compensation that an injured person receives in a personal injury claim depends on a number of individual factors:

• the severity of the injury;
• the extent of any permanent disability caused by the injury;
• the impact that the injury has on their ability to live independently, study, work, or participate in leisure activities;
• additional needs arising from their injury, such as care, specialist equipment or an adapted home;
• their life circumstances before the accident;
• their predicted lifespan;
• litigation risk factors, such as contributory negligence.

Depending on the client’s injury and the way it affects their life, their claim may include compensation for:

• pain, suffering and disability;
• rehabilitation:
  • funded directly by the defendant’s insurer;
  • funded from interim payments;
  • future rehabilitation costs funded from final settlement;
• costs of care;
• case management;
• costs of medical or surgical treatment;
• therapies:
  • occupational therapy (OT);
  • physiotherapy;
  • speech and language therapy (SALT);
  • psychological counselling;
  • pain management;
• loss of earnings and pension;
• additional costs of adapted accommodation;
• assistive technology (IT);
• prosthetics (after amputation);
• specialist equipment and aids;
• extra costs of transport or adapted vehicles;
• special educational needs (SEN);
• Court of Protection deputyship;
• funeral costs (fatal cases);
• bereavement damages (fatal cases);
• loss of dependency on the deceased’s income or services (fatal cases).

Compensation is carefully structured to make the best provision for the injured person’s needs. There are rules protecting compensation for children or adults who lack mental capacity. Compensation may be paid in one or more of the following ways:

• Rehabilitation Code funding – paid directly by the defendant’s insurer to pay for the injured person’s rehabilitation;
• interim (advance) payment whilst the claim is ongoing;
• a lump sum settlement;
• a periodical payments order (PPO) providing lifelong, annual, tax free, index-linked payments for essential costs, such as care and case management, or Court of Protection fees.