Suffering an injury due to someone else’s negligence can be a traumatic and upsetting event. It can leave you seriously injured and affect all aspects of your daily life, including your ability to work and support your family, adding financial concerns to the list of concerns about your mental health and well-being as you recover.
If you have been injured in your workplace, the concern may be even greater as you will need to consider how your employer will react to your injury and the cause of your injury. It can also leave you feeling powerless as you have been injured by your employer’s negligence and now find yourself vulnerable to your employers’ position on sick pay, your future with the company and whether or not they claim your conduct caused your injury and if that will affect your record and position with them.
If you have been out of work for a while, you may be experiencing financial difficulties and therefore may be considering filing a claim, so that you and your family can move on while you recover. This can cause feelings of guilt and worry, will filing a claim affect your employment? Is it wrong to file a claim against the company that has been helping you support your loved ones?
First of all, a claim is not a quick cash grab, it will take time and any amount recovered will be reasonable. Under English law, compensation is not intended to benefit the injured party, but rather to return them to the position they would have been in had the negligence not occurred in the first place. To be successful, you must prove that your accident was caused by the negligence of your employer, your claim simply will not be successful unless you can prove that your employer was negligent and that this is what caused your accident.
If you are considering filing a claim, you should think about the following three points.
Are you able to claim?
To claim your employer for an accident at work you will have to prove that you were an employee of the company. You can do this by showing your employment contract. If you do not have an employment contract, then you can prove that you were an employee by showing a consistent paycheck from the company. You may have had to sign certain documents in order to work for the company, these would also work as proof in a pinch, however your employment contract would be your best and safest form of proof.
You will also need to show that the accident occurred when you were following your employers’ instructions. This means that he must have been engaged in some type of work activity for his claim to be successful. If your employer can prove that you were injured while performing a task that you were not instructed to do, or specifically told to do, or that you were gambling in the workplace, your claim is less likely to succeed.
Did you follow the health and safety rules? This also includes the use of the proper equipment provided for a task. For example, if you were doing manual labor that involved drilling and were not wearing the safety equipment provided by your employer and were injured, your employer will have a defense against you if you are always partially responsible for your own health and safety. at work. However, if your employer had certain safety rules that were never enforced, this may derail that defense. It is not a defense to say that staff were required to wear X amount of safety equipment if staff were never reprimanded for not wearing the correct equipment or following health and safety rules.
Do you want to file a claim yourself or go to a lawyer?
If you file a claim through an attorney, the attorney will process it for you. This does not mean that you will not have to do anything, you should speak regularly with your lawyer and answer their questions to the best of your ability. But most of the heavy lifting will be done by the legal team. However, this means that you will lose a percentage of your compensation, usually about 25%.
If you file the claim yourself, you will have to do all the work yourself, but you will keep any compensation you receive.
What financing options are available?
Most IP claims that are made through attorneys will be dealt with under a No Win No Fee Agreement, where if you are successful, a portion of your compensation (usually 25%) will go to the attorney in legal fees, but that it is not your only option. You may have insurance that allows you to keep all of your compensation, although it is not guaranteed. Check your car and/or home insurance to see if you have the legal protection supplement. You can also file your claim yourself, this means you will not have to pay any legal fees, but all of your out-of-pocket costs, such as medical reporting fees and court fees, will be paid out of your own pocket.
conclusion
Once you’ve considered the three questions above, you’ll be in a much stronger position to know whether or not you want to file a claim and how you want to do it.