Suffering an injury from 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 provide for your family, adding financial concerns to the list of concerns about your health and mental well-being as you recover.
If you have suffered an injury at 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 it. It can also make you feel helpless as you have been injured by your employer’s negligence and are now vulnerable to your employers’ position regarding sick pay, your future at the company, and whether or not they claim that your conduct caused your injury and if that will occur. affect your track record and position with them.
If you have been absent from work for a while, you may be in financial difficulties and therefore may be considering filing a claim, so that you and your family can continue to work while you recover. This can cause feelings of guilt and concern. Will filing a claim affect your employment? Is it wrong to file a lawsuit against the company that has been helping you support your loved ones?
First of all, a claim is not a quick cash draw, it will take time and any amount recovered will be reasonable. Under English law, compensation is not intended to benefit the injured party, but instead puts them back in 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 employers, your claim will simply not be successful unless you can prove that your employer was negligent and that this was what caused your accident.
If you are considering filing a claim, you should think about the following three points.
Can you claim?
To claim against your employer for a work accident, you must prove that you were an employee of the company. You can do this by showing your employment contract. If you don’t have an employment contract, then you can prove you were an employee by showing a consistent paycheck from the company. You may have had to sign certain documents to be able to work for the company, these would also work as proof in case of need, however, your employment contract would be the best and safest form of proof.
You will also need to show that the accident occurred when you followed the instructions of your employers. This means that you must have been doing some type of work activity for your claim to be successful. If your employer can show that you were injured performing a task that you were not instructed to do, or that you were specifically told not to do, or that you were gambling in the workplace, your claim is less likely to be successful.
Were you following the health and safety rules? This also includes the use of the appropriate equipment provided for a task. For example, if you were doing some manual work that involved drilling and were not wearing the safety equipment provided by your employer and suffered an injury, 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 can 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, they will enforce it for you. This does not mean that you will not have to do anything, you will need to speak with your attorney regularly and answer their queries 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 risk losing 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 enforced through attorneys will be resolved by a no-fee settlement, in which, if successful, a portion of your compensation (usually 25%) will go to the attorney for legal fees, but that is not the only option. You may have insurance that allows you to keep all of your compensation, although it is not guaranteed. Check your auto and / or home insurance to see if you have the legal protection add-on. You can also file your claim yourself, this means you will not have to pay legal fees, but all your out-of-pocket costs, such as medical report fees and court fees, will be paid out of pocket.
Conclution
Once you have considered the three questions above, you will be in a much stronger position to know whether or not you want to file a claim and how you want to do it.