Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Many accidents involve several people who were at fault. Courts are very used to apportioning (dividing up) the damages so that each pays according to his fault. The technical name for this is ‘contributory negligence.’ If you are found to have been fifty per cent responsible for your accident, you will only receive fifty per cent of the amount which represents your injury and losses, but that amount can very often still be worth pursuing.

I am not sure. Why do you pay it? This is presented as the cost of taking legal action, but as you will see from elsewhere on this site, court actions are now usually conducted on a no-win-no-fee basis, which means that it will not cost you anything anyway.

I am sure there may be other forms of legal expenses, but the taking of a case is the substantial one.

It is worse than that, however. Because the insurer ‘pays’ you legal expenses, it also controls who does the work for you. It sends your case to a solicitor of its own choice. As a result it will typically receive another payment of sometimes £700.00 from the solicitor for the introduction.

Just think for a moment. You are paying your £15.00 a year so that when you have to sue an insurer, another insurer chooses who fights for you, and takes the payment you make for the cost of passing you on, and then takes an additional hidden kickback.

Think again next time.

All court actions are subject to time limits. If you delay beyond the limit, then your right to make a claim is lost forever. The period is often 3 years, but in many situations it can be less, and sometimes it can be longer.

If you think now that you might just have a claim, just ask now.It will not cost you anything, and teh difference can be substantial.

Yes. We do not deduct anything. We pay you all the compensation we receive on your behalf.
The court may itself deduct a proportion of the total value of your damages if it finds that you are to some extent at fault. Also, if you have received benefits after the injury, the total of benefits you have received will be deducted by the other side and paid to the government before they pay anything to us.
These deductions are universal. They apply however you make your claim – we just tell you about it up front.

This depends upon many things including how quickly the other side processes your claim. We now use the best in modern trechnology to keep your action moving forward as fast as we can.

No, but we only take on cases where we believe you can succeed.
I think it was partly my fault. The more important question is whether somebody else was at fault in causing the accident. If they are then compensation will be payable. Sometimes a claimant will himself be partly to blame. If so, the judge will decide how much you were responsible.

Yes. There is, almost, nothing we have not heard before, and what you tell us is in complete confidence, though we do have to make your claim openly and honestly.

APIL stands for the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. APIL accredits personal injury lawyers in the UK. Personal injury litigation is a specialist subject. There are a large number of traps for the unwary. An accredited law firm must demonstrate that it meets high standards in its knowledge and its practice. Wrigley Claydon has shown that to APIL. We can show this to you.

APIL lawyers will put your best interests first.
APIL lawyers will provide clear, impartial and honest advice about your case.
APIL lawyers will tell you if you will have to pay anything to pursue your case and, if so, how much.
If you do have to pay to pursue your case, APIL lawyers will charge you a fair price with no hidden costs.
APIL lawyers will explain your legal position iin clear language.
APIL lawyers who feel unable to deal with your case will act only in your best interests in suggesting a referral to another lawyer.
APIL lawyers will keep you updated about all aspects of your case.
APIL lawyers will consider other appropriate remedies as well as financial ones.
APIL Lawyers will not cold call.
APIL Lawyers will only publish advertisements that are accurate and truthful.

As solciitors, our skills are in fighting cases for our clients. Claims companies are middle-men. They are organisations which set out to gather in personal injury claims, and to then, and for a fee, pass the work to selected claims firms, including solicitors. By definition, as an extra person in the chain, they are not needed. They are not needed by you, since by reading this, you have demonstrated that you have found your way past the middle-man.
Some claims companies actually try to present claims for clients. Any firm of solicitors will say so clearly and loudly. If they do not say they are solicitors, the company will not be one. A non-solicitor firm which sets out to claim money for personal injury clients should be avoided. They cannot take the matter into court, and the defendant insurers know this and their offers of settlement will be lower. There is no financial advantage to you, since our service does not cost you anything anyway.

This No Win No Fee system looks like magic – It must be a con. The conditional fee (No Win No fee) system may seem like magic, but it is not. In practice we are each of us insured. When settling claims now, insurance companies pay higher sums in costs to claimants. As solicitors take on the risks of any particular case. If we win four out of five cases, then the extra costs recovered in the four cases helps to pay the costs of the fifth. The insurers pay out larger sums in costs to us in the four cases, and we buy insurance which will pay out their costs on that fifth case.

In practice, the insurers add up all the costs of the claims they settle and recover them from their insured populatin as a whole – from you and me. In effect therefore we all pay a little more for our insurance, and this puts each of us, when and if necessary, in a position to take an action when we need to.

The conditional fee (No Win No fee) system may seem like magic, but it is not. In practice we are each of us insured. When settling claims now, insurance companies pay higher sums in costs to claimants. As solicitors take on the risks of any particular case. If we win four out of five cases, then the extra costs recovered in the four cases helps to pay the costs of the fifth. The insurers pay out larger sums in costs to us in the four cases, and we buy insurance which will pay out their costs on that fifth case.

In practice, the insurers add up all the costs of the claims they settle and recover them from their insured populatin as a whole – from you and me. In effect therefore we all pay a little more for our insurance, and this puts each of us, when and if necessary, in a position to take an action when we need to.

No. It is clear that the fear of such a culture does lead to many people restricting their activities unnecessarily – we have become risk averse, but in practice the number of claims bought is less than in earlier times. The No-Win No-Fee system has made a very big difference. Before this system if you were very wealthy or very poor, you could make a claim. If you were in the middle with a goodcase, you lost out. No there is a much simpler question, is your case a good one? If so you can claim. The people who have lost out are those whose claims are proper but problematic.

It is worth contrasting our system with that in the US. In both, a claimant can expect to take his claim forward with little or no expense. Here, our system says that a solicitor is rewarded with success by an additional proportion of his costs – the size of the damages award is usually not relevant. In the US, the system is that the lawyer takes a proportion of the damages. The lawyer is therefore encouraged to ‘big up’ his claim as much as possible. By the way, do not believe the huge awards one hears of from US juries. Yes, they are made, and Yes they are nearly always reduced very substantially afterwards either by appeal or by the threat of an appeal.

Our well established team of solicitors have in-depth knowledge and experience in this area of law, so please call us for more information:
Manchester Office: 0161 914 9881
Oldham Office: 0161 624 6811
Todmorden Office: 01706 815712

Team: Vijay Srivastava and Shalish Mehta