Industry news roundup: week ended 26 Apr 2014:
The wheels of justice grind slowly – but when they’re done, those seeking compensation for accident claims can be quite well off indeed.
There’s nothing more frustrating – or tragic, if you ask me – than being involved in a harrowing accident and then having to wait for months or even years before your personal injury claims are attended to. Nowhere is this more obvious than the wake of the now six month old Clutha helicopter crash, where there hasn’t been one personal injury compensation award handed out to any of the victims or their bereaved families.
Industry experts say that it could be more than a year in total before the most egregious personal injury claims are addressed. This means that those who have been left the worse off in the wake of the tragedy could be left twisting in the wind for much too long – that’s a lot of additional suffering if you ask me. I can only hope that things get a bit more speedy, especially for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or debilitating injuries from the crash. The idea of these poor people going untreated and uncompensated makes me sick to my stomach.
Meanwhile the personal injury compensation industry could take even longer than a single year to resolve itself. It’s typical in places with similar legal systems to the UK – for instance, the United States has laws that are quite analogous, and it can take a serious amount of time for some cases to resolve. For instance, one mother and daughter were finally awarded their compensation for a woman and her daughter that were gravely injured – and the total sum has been announced to be a whopping $15 million!
The injury in question was much more severe than it looks at first glance, especially since it involves a young mother of a four year old being violently thrown about as the bus they were riding on went over a speed bump rather energetically. The woman landed hard and sustained enough damage to one of her vertebrae that she needed surgical attention, and even in the wake of her surgeries she has been in excruciating pain whenever she did anything – like walking, talking, sitting, or breathing. It was found that the bus driver hit the speed bump traveling at too great a speed, which caused the injuries.