Personal Injury

Personal injury claims must generally be brought within three years under section 6(2) of the Limitation of Actions Law 66(I)/2012, running from the day the cause of action was complete or from the day the injured person came to know of the injury where that was later. That is half the period allowed for ordinary contract claims, which is why the date of the accident is the first thing we ask for. Where the three years have passed, section 6(3) gives the court a discretion to disapply the limitation provisions in a claim for injury or death, and it cannot be exercised more than two years after the period expired. If three years is close, or has passed, say so before anything else. Section 27Α of the same Law suspends the limitation period for negligence and breach of statutory duty for thirty nine months from the day the 2021 amending law came into force, so the three years is not by itself the answer to whether a claim is in time.

Usually there is. Where an injured person contributed to their own injury, the ordinary approach is that the claim is not defeated but the award is reduced to reflect that share of responsibility. How a court would apportion it in a particular case is a matter for evidence, and nobody can tell you the proportion at the first meeting.

Not before the medical position is understood. An early offer is made at the point when least is known about the injury, which is precisely when settling is least advisable. It is not evidence of what the claim is worth. Take advice on it before you sign anything, including anything described as a receipt or a discharge. Those documents are contracts. A receipt, a discharge and a settlement agreement bind you once they satisfy section 10 of the Contract Law, Cap. 149, and they are set aside only on the grounds that Law itself provides: coercion under section 15, undue influence under section 16, fraud under section 17, misrepresentation under section 18, and common mistake as to a material fact under section 21. That the sum was low is not by itself one of them, although section 25(3) allows the court to take the inadequacy of consideration into account in deciding whether consent was freely given.

Not in your matter. The prohibition on the same advocate supporting parties with conflicting interests belongs to the professional and ethical rules governing practice, and the Advocates Law, Cap. 2, names it expressly in section 14N(1), which requires compliance with the provisions concerning, among other things, "the prohibition on the same advocate supporting parties who have conflicting interests". We do not act on both sides of the same or a related claim, and a conflict check is run before anything else happens. Acting for both sides across the practice, in separate and unrelated matters, is deliberate: it means we know how a file is assessed by the people who will be assessing yours.

Yes, and more than most people expect. A gap between the accident and the first medical attendance is the point most often taken against an injured person, because it invites the argument that the injury came from something else. The first medical record made after an accident does work that no later report can do.

The heads usually in issue are set out in the firm's guide to compensation heads: pain and suffering, loss of earnings already suffered and in the future, loss of earning capacity, medical, hospital and rehabilitation costs, and other documented expenses. Special damages have to be pleaded specifically and proved strictly. What the claim is worth turns on the medical evidence and the documented loss, not on the kind of accident.

No. Under section 65 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, in computing damages no account is taken of any sum paid or payable under a contract of insurance in respect of the wrong, nor of any sum paid or payable by the Social Insurance Fund as a benefit or allowance in consequence of the same circumstances. Receiving a benefit while you recover does not reduce the claim, and it is not a reason to delay taking advice.

Ask about the limitation position and about who brings the claim before you do anything else, and take neither for granted. One rule is worth knowing: under the second proviso to section 59 of Cap. 148, a child who has not completed their twelfth year is not to be regarded as capable of knowing or appreciating a dangerous state of affairs, or of voluntarily exposing themselves to it, so the defence of voluntary assumption of risk is not open against a younger child at all. Collect the same evidence as in any other claim: photographs, the record of the incident and the medical notes.

It becomes a different claim, brought by the dependants. Under section 58 of Cap. 148, where a person is killed by a civil wrong that would have entitled them to sue had they lived, the person who would have been liable remains liable notwithstanding the death, and the action is brought for the benefit of the deceased's dependants. Section 58(3) defines who those are, regardless of age: the spouse, any parent or other ascendant, any person the deceased treated as a parent, and any child or other descendant. The period runs from the death rather than from the accident, and families are frequently told otherwise. Contact us directly with the dates and the documents you have.