Personal Injury Solicitor Negligence Claim

Imagine this scenario, you’re involved in a motorcycle accident and sustained several injuries. You went with the solicitor your insurer recommended to you and your case was handled very quickly, concluding in an inadequate sum of compensation for your injuries. However since settling your claim, the injuries have developed and you now have to pay for an operation and the compensation you originally received has run out.

In a nutshell, no, you can’t reopen an already settled case.

What you can do is sue the solicitor who handled your case for professional negligence. They might have missed crucial medical information about your injuries or put undue pressure on you to settle too early, without making you aware of the full effects of your injuries and therefore breaching their duty of care towards you by not properly advising you on the risks of settling. All too often insurers are eager to settle cases early due to their own motives and business targets, not your needs as an injured motorcyclist.

The early days of a solicitors negligence case are governed by a “pre-action protocol”. Your former solicitors have 21 days to acknowledge our letter of claim, where we set out where they went wrong, and why it was negligent. They then have three months to investigate and answer fully. We will often be able to obtain your former solicitors file. We will advise you of two basic things;

- Was the solicitor/paralegal negligent?
- If so what has it cost you?

The courts allow a six month period to see if the party can conclude the matter and thereafter you are free to take the matter up in court.

There are strict time limits imposed on bringing a professional negligence claim against the solicitors who mishandled your motorcycle accident so you need to contact us as early as possible. One of our professional and fully trained solicitors will fully advise you of the steps to bring a professional negligence claim against your personal injury solicitor.

At White Dalton all our solicitors are specialist personal injury lawyers and will be best placed to advise you on how much your claim should have been worth and what points your original solicitor may have missed. Making a claim against your previous solicitor can be complex and difficult so you need to make sure you have the right team of experienced solicitors on your side.

Once the true picture is established of how your injuries had been undervalued through a thorough investigation of the file and correspondence it must also be remembered that you may not be able to claim for the full amount of compensation for the injuries you sustained. Instead you can claim for what is called “lost chance”.

All too often we take over claims from other solicitors where the injured motorcyclists either feels that the person dealing with their case hasn’t got their best interests at heart or is inexperienced, perhaps even a trainee. This will affect your claim in so far as you may eventually receive the incorrect amount of compensation for your injuries.

There is a difference between a solicitor acting negligently and a solicitor providing poor service and the two are handled differently. Poor or inadequate service may include the running of a case where there have been delays.

Generally speaking this is fairly clear cut and amounts to poor service but delay, for example missing a court deadline, can lead to very significant material financial losses in your claim.

When poor service has been received from a solicitor, you are generally advised to approach the Legal Ombudsman who have the power to obtain compensation for inadequate service from a solicitor. If negligence on the part of the solicitor has caused greater financial losses then you would be well advised to talk to one of our motorcycle solicitors to explore the option of suing your previous solicitor.

Our solicitors will provide guidance, on liability and losses and assess the likely merits of your negligence claim and also discuss how to fund your claim, from “No win, no fee” to private funding.

There are some tell-tale signs that your motorcycle accident claim is not being properly handled, these can include:

- Not having enough compensation to fund your recovery expenses
- New injuries developing from the original accident injuries
- After the claim had settled, your injury wasn’t healing in the expected timeframe
- Your claim settled in a very short space of time (a few weeks to months). The amount of time a claim takes depends on the severity of your injuries

Poor service is different from negligence. Generally speaking if you feel that you have received poor service from your solicitor, you should first contact your solicitor directly. If that fails then the Legal Ombudsman have the authority to obtain compensation for inadequate service received from a solicitor.

Some examples of poor service include:

- Treating you unfairly
- Not providing for any special access requirements that you may have
- Not providing enough information to you so that you can choose the correct service
- Not explaining how your problem will be handled and the options available
- Providing inadequate information about the likely costs involved
- Failing to keep you updated of progress and changes
- Not informing you about your right to complain and how to make a complaint
- How to start a personal injury solicitor negligence claim

You have a number of options. Most clients go for the “no win no fee” which is best for most people unless you have “pre-existing legal cover”, which is usually on your household insurance policy. You are unlikely to have it on your motorbike legal expenses insurance policy, not least because the legal expenses insurers are the people who receive referral fees for passing on cases, or quite often own the law firm that represented you.

For some cases, private funding (ie pay as you go) is an option, but this would be unusual. If you have a very large and very clear cut claim, this could work for you. You can fund your own case through interim payments if the case is very clear.

Legal aid is not available for non clinical professional negligence claims. We do not offer it. The criteria is set out in the community services website.