Personal Injury Solicitors... Please help!

Help & Advice
1

Hi All,
Firstly thanks for taking the time out to read this. On March 24th 2011 I was involved in an RTC. A smart car pulled out in front of me from a side road without looking, I hit the front doing 30mph and was thrown 20ft into the other lane…

I should state, I’m a young, fit and healthy 25 year old, (24 at time of accident) and have no previous medical complaints on record or in actual fact.

Liability was accepted and does not remain to be the issue. My insurance company assigned a solicitor firm to me, New Law Solicitors; which is the company they always use. Now… Almost a year on from the accident my case has been passed on through three departments within the firm. Initially it was with a paralegal, then passed to a solicitor (once the claim had reached a certain value, standard practise) and then recently was moved up a notch further to a senior solicitor in the fast track department (Essentially they take on the larger cases and therefore have a smaller volume of work to do so its more “tailored a service!” Or so I am lead to believe…)

To the point; In the accident I sustained an injury to my back, shoulder, neck, jaw and “man area.” I receieved physio for the back, neck and shoulder but when my back showed no signs of improvement the physio refused to treat me as didn’t know what the problem was and referred me for an MRI. 6 months later I had the MRI and it conspires I have herniated discs in my lower spine. Now, here’s the difficulty. My lumbar spine shows sign of degeneration (which surely is just natural,) so the question is raised as to whether the discs would have herniated if it was a fully healthy spine. Obviously this can’t be proved and no one will ever know. So this raises questions over treatment due to the “likelihood of probability” that they refer to in personal injury cases. All of the other injuries were linked directly to the accident and treatment is on going or has been sorted. However my back and shoulder still cause my huge problems and I live every day in pain, with some serious restrictions.

I have had serious problems accessing the medical care due to delays and so forth, and live every day in pain. My job, personal life and everything I do has been affected by the injury to my back and although I took myself back to work after 6 months off through boredom and going crazy in doors, I have remained on light duties and amunable to fulfil my contractual obligations. I am the technical manager of a theatre, so am unable to carry out my usual duties, such as manual handling.

I spoke to my new solicitor with regards finally sorting out the treatment as it conpires I may need an operation to fix my back in order to move forward. However, due to the degeneration this may pose some issues if I cannot obtain a report that states it WAS the accident that caused the herniations. I keep explaining to the solicitors that I have zero interest in the personal injury aspect of the claim and getting a pay out - which is all they keep talking about. All I want is to get back to health and live my life back in my pre accident condition. My solicitor has ZERO interest in my health or rehabilitation and simply keeps telling me that I’m going to get a decent pay out and that as it stands my back is worth £10-15k. They don’t seem to comprehend that I am not interested in the money, I’m 25 years old and I want to live my bl00dy life.

Can anyone give me any advice? I know that any injury solicitors first port of call is going to be getting as much money out of the third party as possible, but this has zero interest to me, my concern is my health and well being. If I were to look into getting a different solicitor, am I going to just be in the same boat with someone simply looking for financial gain as opposed to getting me fixed?? Obviously my solicitor isn’t saying directly, “hold off, you’ll get a better pay out,” but in Lehmans terms, that is what they’re saying.

Has anyone been in a similar boat that can recommend something that I can do? I genuinely don’t give a sh!t about the money side of the claim, just want to get back to normal and get back to riding and I don’t want the sole purpose of my case to become putting a price on my body!

Are all personal injury lawyers simply going to be after to money, or is there someone out there that would actually have a duty of care to someone that was genuinely injured and in need of treatment? I know that due to the degeneration that is may pose some difficulties in obtaining causation, but surely this should be something that my solicitor would want to fight for to obtain as early as possible? Instead they are taking me down a long and stress and pain filled road whilst they c0ck about trying to get as much money as possible.

If anyone could please give me some advice it would be greatly receieved. I just want to be fixed and back to normal!!
If I have missed out any details, ask away and I’ll endeavour to answer! Writing this in a bit of a mood following a chat with my solicitor who doesn’t seem to listen - cash register in his head keeps pinging!!

Many thanks for your time in advance,

Steve!!

2

Send a PM to TC on here in case he doesn’t read this post - he’s the expert on this

Best of luck:)

(edit -he’s T.C - it won’t work without the . )

3

I don’t honestly believe that a Personal Injury Solicitor, no matter how good they are, is going to be able to help your situation. Your current solicitor is doing what he is supposed to do, which is ensure that you receive the maximum compensation that you are due for the accident.

It appears that your problems are more medical related. What you need therefore is a medical solution, you want your back to be repaired as soon as possible so that you can get on with your life.

Your personal injury solicitor will have no impact on the medical treatment that you will receive. You need to chase up your Doctors and your GP to ensure that whatever treatment you require is forthcoming as soon as possible. They won’t be holding back due to any insurance claim you are making, it is simply that the NHS is not the fastest medical treatment process on the face of the planet and you may need to make sure that they are aware of the problems, have solutions in the pipeline and that you are on the list to receive that solution as soon as possible.

I don’t think that this is anything a Solicitor can help you with.

There is one aspect, if you do receive a payout, you may be able to rely upon private medical treatment to speed up the process, but that is extremely expensive, and what your solicitor might be saying to you is that if you don’t receive the treatment on the NHS prior to their being an agreement on the degenerative nature of the herniated disc then it well be that once a diagnosis of whether this is due to the accident is concluded you may be able to apply for private medical treatment and add this to the claim that you are making for a personal injury.

However, that is not clear from your post.

4

That is not strictly true.

The solicitor handling the case has a duty with the third party to promote and encourage the best way of aiding a full recovery, which in our case often means instructing a specialist case handler who can advise what is the best treatment to aid a speedy recovery, and then the solicitor will arrange a CMC (Case mamagement conference) with the third party to discuss either funding private treatment or the best alternative that is in the best interests of the client.

The third party are also obliged to assist as they have to be seen to mitigate some of their losses, and so they have to co-operate.

Unfortunately, the OP has used their legal expenses appointed solicitors who do not have a particularly good name anyway, and will be looking to settle as quickly as possible so they get paid their fees rather than look after your best interests.

Gregog, if you want to drop me a PM with a contact number, I will be happy to give you a call without any obligation and talk your situation over with you.

You are entitled to change law firms if you think you are not getting the right level of service, and it will not cost you anything, but this is again something I am happy to discuss with you.

5

I have just recieved my compensation 3 years and 3 months after my accident. New Law were my advisors and Robert Beer was my solicitor. I cannot stress how good he was to me and he is someone that I hold in very high regard.

One issue I had is that my knee was injured in the accident and I subsequently had an arthroscopy on it. Problem is with an injury of this nature is it is very difficult to determine if it was caused by the accident or was a pre existing condition. Robert toook the view that, bundled with the other injuries, it made up part of the claim and was treated as such. In such my compensation payment then included this injury.

These things do unfortunatly take time. I had to wait a year after initially being assessed by the specialist to see if my condition had got worst, better or no change and then to be seen again by the specialist.

If you are unsure of anything then ask your solicitor to run through it with you, Robert seemed to spend his whole life doing that for me.:smiley:

6

Londondrz… I dealt with Robert Beer for a little while (h’e a senior in the company) after I made a complaint. Would you be around sometime for a chat so that I can pick your brains about a few things? Thanks so much for posting on here! Don’t want to inundate you qith questions by pm, so thought I’d best ask if you were happy to chat about it etc!!

Cheers,
Steve