Are you aware that hundreds of thousands of people sustain personal injury as a result of road accidents every year? Many of those people are victims of someone’s (or some company’s) negligence and could benefit from the help of a personal injury solicitor.
If you have ever suffered from a personal injury resulting from a road accident you know that it is not just about the physical and emotional impact. Typical financial costs include medical expenses, damage to property and lost wages. It is unfair that you should have to pay out for these costs if you were not to blame for the accident.
Yet, most of the time the victims of personal injury do not file a claim to get what they are entitled to. Help to those people may come from their family or friends, but surely that is not right; should it not be the one responsible for the accident who should be the one paying?
If you have suffered injury resulting from the negligence of someone else, you should contact a personal injury solicitor, who will help you figure out how much compensation you can expect, and how long it might take to receive it. However, with so many personal injury solicitors to choose from, how do you chose one?
The first step should be getting referrals. Have any of your family, friend or work colleagues filed an accident claim in the past? Even if they have not personally filed a claim, they may well know someone who has that they can put you in contact with. As well, as recommending a solicitor, they will also be able to explain how the process works.
If you do not know anyone who can refer you to a solicitor, then you will need to do a bit of research. Look for solicitor offices around your town and so some Internet searches for the name of your town plus the keyword phrases “personal injury solicitor” and “personal injury claims”.
But do not stop there; is that solicitor office specialized in personal injury claims? As a rule of thumb, those who specialize in something do a better job than generalists, and solicitors are no different. If you want to get the maximum amount of compensation, you should therefore look for a solicitor or a firm that has done it the past.
Another indicator that a solicitor is serious about your claim is that he or she will offer a no-win no-fee arrangement. This means that you only pay the solicitor if you win the case. This situation means that you have absolutely nothing to lose; you either get paid compensation, or you are no worse off than you were before filing the claim.
It is not easy to find a personal injury solicitor that will offer both experience and a no-win no-fee injury arrangement, but it is well worth putting in the effort looking for one.
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This article was written by a personal injury solicitor with more than 10 years experience of dealing with personal claims. To find out more information, click here: Accident Claim Help
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The case of Thornley v Land Securities Trillium Ltd [2005] concerned a claim for unfair and constructive dismissal by an employee who alleged that her employer imposed a new job description on her and she contended that her contract of employment was fundamentally breached by such changes to her duties imposed by her employer. The Tribunal upheld this claim.
The employee was originally employed by the BBC as an architect in its construction management department. On or around 12 November 2001, a substantial part of the construction department was transferred to the appellant employer, Thornley, under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1982.
Following this transfer, the employer announced its plans to restructure the department. This meant that the employee’s role would have changed to that of a managerial role from the hands-on architectural work she had previously done. On or around 1 October 2002, the employee attended a meeting where she indicated that she believed her position was being made redundant. She wrote to the employer stating that as a result of the proposed restructuring, her professional expertise was being dissipated and she was becoming de-skilled as an architect. She also stated that her position was being made redundant. On or around 8 December, she again wrote to her employer raising a grievance in respect of the new role, which she claimed was not comparable with the job specification of the role she had when she was transferred to the employer.
She brought a grievance hearing and following this hearing on 28 January 2003, the employee was informed that her position was not redundant. On 13 February, she resigned on the grounds of constructive dismissal. The employee then made an employment tribunal claim where she claimed constructive dismissal. The tribunal found that the effective cause of the employee’s resignation had been the imposition of the new job description, which fundamentally breached the terms of her contract, with the result that the employee was entitled to resign and to be treated as having been dismissed. The tribunal therefore upheld her claim. The employer appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
The employer in its appeal contended that the tribunal had misconstrued the employee’s contract of employment:
The tribunal’s decision was perverse;
The issues for the determination by the EAT were whether the tribunal had erred in arriving at its conclusion with regard to:
the extent of the employee’s duties under her contract;
the extent to which those duties were to be changed;
whether the employer had been entitled to change her duties; and
if not, whether the employer’s breach of contract was a fundamental breach entitling her to resign.
The EAT dismissed the appeal and held that in the circumstances:
the tribunal was entitled to conclude that the changes to the employee’s duties under her contract of employment were a fundamental breach of her contract;
the tribunal did not err in its construction of the employee’s contract or in concluding that by the changes proposed to her duties, the employer had intended not to be bound by her contract;
the tribunal’s decision that the employee was entitled to resign on the basis of constructive dismissal was correct;
no error could be detected in the way in which the tribunal identified the employee’s express duties under her contract of employment;
the tribunal’s conclusions on the evidence that there were significant changes to her duties, which would have had the effect of deskilling her as an architect, were unimpeachable; and
the employee’s contract, read as a whole, did not permit the employer to change the employee’s duties to the extent and nature it had proposed.
If you require further information contact us.
© RT COOPERS, 2005. This Briefing Note does not provide a comprehensive or complete statement of the law relating to the issues discussed nor does it constitute legal advice. It is intended only to highlight general issues. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in relation to particular circumstances.
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