Why should you instruct a Personal Injuries Solicitor when you have been involved in an accident and have suffered Personal Injuries.
Insurance companies and the Personal Injuries Assessment Board constantly promote the fact that that a claimant does not need to instruct a Personal Injuries solicitor in order to submit an application to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. According to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, submitting your application is relatively straight forward and by submitting the application yourself, you can reduce your legal costs and maximise your reward.
What the Personal Injuries Assessment Board do not tell you, is that if you have been in an accident, you do not only instruct a solicitor to submit your application, you instruct a Personal Injuries solicitor to advise you of the value of your claim. This advice is essential when considering whether the assessment made by the Personal Injuries Assessment Board appropriately compensates you for your injuries.
With over thirty years’ experience in Personal Injuries Law, Hanahoe and Hanahoe Solicitors LLP specialise in giving our clients such advice. If we advise a client to reject the Personal Injuries Board’s assessment, we are confident that we will obtain more compensation by issuing proceedings. While we can never give clients any guarantees, we have never failed to obtain a greater award, where we have advised a client to reject the Personal Injuries Board’s assessment.
The Personal Injuries Assessment Board also boasts that they can process your claim in less than nine months. At Hanahoe and Hanahoe solicitors, we do not ‘process’ claims. One ‘processes’ numbers and we do not see or treat our clients as mere numbers. More importantly, it is very rare that someone who has been in an accident will have fully recovered from their injuries within nine months. The value of an injury should not be assessed unless the injured party has (A) fully recovered from their injuries or (B) has been medically advised that their injuries will not substantially deteriorate. This is particularly evident, where the injured party has suffered whip lash type injuries. If you have been in an accident and you recover from your injuries within a year, your claim is worth less than if you recover from your injuries within two years. It is therefore inherently unwise to settle your claim after nine months, in circumstances where you have on-going injuries. If you accept the assessment from the Personal Injuries Board and at a later date you realise that your injuries are much worse than you initially anticipated, there is no going back.
Finally in many accidents, particularly public liability accidents, it can be very difficult to identify exactly who is liable for your injuries. There is a strict two year statute of limitations for the taking of a personal injury claim and it is therefore essential that you identify the correct Defendant. If you fail to identify the correct defendant, you may find that your action is statute barred.
Here are a couple of examples where we at Hanahoe and Hanahoe Solicitors LLP advised our clients to reject the Personal Injuries Board Assessment and obtained substantially more compensation through the courts.
- LM – Motor Traffic Accident – PIAB assessed damages at €20,698.50 we settled for €55,000.00 plus costs
- HK – Motor Traffic Accident – PIAB assessed damages at €12,200.00 we settled for €40,000.00 plus costs.
- LH – Motor Traffic Accident – PIAB assessed damages at €12,500.00 we settled for €20,000.00 plus costs.
- CM – Trip and Fall Accident – PIAB assessed damages at €36,000.00 we settled for €47,500.00 plus costs within four months of the PIAB assessment.
- JMc – Trip and Fall Accident – PIAB assessed damages at €42,000.00 we settled for €70,000.00 plus costs.
If you have any queries regarding personal injuries or any other aspects of Law, please do not hesitate to contact Hanahoe and Hanahoe, Solicitors, 16 North Main Street, Naas, County Kildare.
Tel: 045 897784 086 6013611 (24 hours)
Email: info@hanahoeandhanahoe.com
Website www.hanahoe-solicitors-naas.ie