Accident compensation

An accident rarely comes with a single answer to the question of who pays. A delivery van is hit at a junction, an employee falls on a customer’s site, a visitor slips in the shop: within days there are two or three insurers, a claim form from each, and an adjuster who already has a view. What is said and signed in those first weeks tends to fix the shape of the file, and a claim assembled in a hurry is often closed for less than it was worth.

Accident compensation is therefore as much about sequence as about fault. Several regimes can apply to the same event, each with its own payer and its own conditions, and the way they fit together decides how much reaches the person who was hurt, and how soon:

• the rules on securing the facts — the accident report, witness statements, photographs and the evidence that disappears first;
• the rules on the special schemes for road accidents, which may compensate some victims whoever was at fault;
• the rules on accidents at work and on the journey to and from work, and on what an injured employee may claim from the employer;
• the rules on when a victim may claim directly from the insurer of the person responsible;
• the rules on the guarantee funds that step in when a driver is unidentified, uninsured or insolvent;
• the rules on how the victim’s own conduct reduces what may be claimed, and on the victims protected from that reduction;
• the rules on what social security and the employer have already paid, and on their right to recover it from the party responsible;
• the rules on damage to vehicles, goods and premises, and on the cost of being without them while they are repaired.

Our lawyers can support you with this.