When a person is injured in an accident and suffers from a brain injury as a result that person’s life is unfortunately all too often irreversibly changed.

Here at Irwin Mitchell we strive to make a difference to our client’s lives by building their legal case to recover compensation for their loss whilst at the same time providing support throughout their rehabilitation (more on this in a later blog!).

One of the areas which are invariably affected when a person suffers a brain injury is that person’s ability to work. One of our head injury lawyers who specialises in acting for clients who live abroad and in claims from accidents abroad is currently acting for a French client, who sustained a head injury in a RTA in the UK.  

He lives and works in France. He is able to work, but has problems with fatigue and dealing with a number of tasks at the same time. This means that he is unable to obtain a job at the level he would have expected, but for the accident and has had difficulty keeping the jobs he has had. Our lawyer’s task is to obtain evidence to prove what job and earnings the client would have had had he not suffered a brain injury.

If the client was working in England, we would be able to obtain statistics and evidence from comparators about the availability of jobs and levels of earnings, without much difficulty and this would probably be sufficient for a judge to make his assessment of the client’s loss of earnings.

However, since the client is in France, it is much more difficult to obtain this type of information and therefore our lawyer has decided that an employment expert, who could access relevant information in France, would be of great assistance.
 
It can be very difficult to persuade English judges to allow employment expert reports these days but, because the client is based in France, we consider that this is a case in which an employment expert’s report is crucial to ensure that our client is adequately compensated for his loss of earnings.

We are therefore making an Application to the court for permission to rely on such a report and hope to persuade the judge to allow one to be commissioned. Understanding the needs of a brain injured client is crucial to getting the best result for them. Getting the right evidence and fighting for our client’s case is all part of the daily work of our lawyers.

Hello to everyone. I’m a solicitor specialising in brain injury here in the London Office. I will be contributing to the blog regularly keeping you all up to date with our activities.

Here at Irwin Mitchell we are very lucky to be involved with many very worthwhile charities. One of those charities is Headway – the brain injury organisation. Headway is a remarkable charity supporting and assisting people with brain injury and their families both nationally by campaigning for better services for people with brain injury and through local meeting groups all over the country.

Here in London there are 6 Headway groups offering services including day centres, therapies such as occupational therapy, carer support, social re-integration and community outreach to name but a few. Obviously to enable these crucial services to continue fundraising is extremely important.

It is for this reason that recently 8 dancing queens from our London office donned fluorescent vests, leg warmers and sweat bands and took part in East London Headway’s 8 Hour Dance Marathon(!). East London Headway are a very active local group providing a hub for the community offering a wide range of services such as counselling, physiotherapy, art/music therapy and complementary therapies. With the efforts of our dancing queens and lots of other enthusiastic ‘shimmiers’ Headway managed to raise £15,000 for their ongoing projects. There is even photographic evidence of the dancer’s efforts. A good time had by all and money raised a fantastic charity at the same time!

This week I’ve met the family of a new client who was very seriously injured in a road traffic accident.  He is unconscious and in a critical state in hospital so my colleague, Hilary Wetherell, and I met his family.

It can be difficult meeting families of loved ones who have been injured.  I cannot imagine how much it turns their lives upside down but I strive to do as much as possible to help the injured person and their family, which often goes beyond giving legal advice and making legal claims.

For example, when I meet injured people in the early days after their accident I can involve our own client liaison manager (who is an occupational therapist) who will liaise with the hospital on behalf of the client, help ensure that arrangements for discharge from hospital run smoothly, ensure appropriate care and therapy is in place when they are back at home and to help with each step towards rehabilitation.  She can also explain about welfare benefits and accommodation.

Because we are specialists in helping people who have suffered very serious injuries, I often know the doctors and therapists they will meet during their rehabilitation.  This can help to ensure things which should happen are happening.  And where support is not in place we have legal specialists who can help ensure that local authorities etc are doing everything they should do.  We also have legal specialists who can help people to make arrangements for loved ones who do not at that time have the capacity to make decisions themselves.

All these extra things compliment the specialist legal service I provide and hopefully make a difficult situation a little easier for our clients.  I like my clients to know that they can just pick up the phone and call me if they are worried or unsure about anything.  It’s these things and actually making a difference for people who are injured and their families that make me love my job.

It's been an interesting few days in the office. A partner in my team, Jane and I are working on a case that involves a young client who was involved in a serious fall. The client sustained a very severe head injury as a result.
 
Our client's family initially took advice from a small firm of solicitors who didn't specialise in head injury legal claims and didn’t do much towards investigating the merits of his case. 

When we took over conduct of the case a few months ago, we realised that we were going to have to do a lot of detective work to find out whether or not our client had a claim as the scene of the accident had been substantially altered.  Last week, Jane and I carried out a site inspection and we took the opportunity to see if we could find some witnesses that might be able to help us to work out what changes had been made.  We have also been in contact with the current owners of the site, the planning office and this week, I will be trying to track down some aerial photographers! We already have some good evidence in support of our client’s head injury claim and we still have more work to do. 

Since joining the team in 2006, I have worked on a quite a few cases that initially started with other firms.  There are some firms that do an excellent job in this very specialised area of the law, but unfortunately some don’t understand the issues that come along with head injury cases. People often think that the solicitors that wrote their will or sold their house will be able to handle their claim, when this is rarely the case.  For example, one firm advised one of our client’s to settle her claim for £30,000 but hadn’t realised that she had a head injury. We subsequently settled her claim for over £1million.

Hello and welcome to all to our blog on head injuries, to which I will contributing on a regular basis – I am part of the team of solicitors in our Manchester office who specialise particularly in representing and supporting those individuals who have suffered a brain injury. 

Here in the Manchester office this evening we are hosting a seminar for case managers; this is something we arrange on a regular basis and is a fantastic opportunity to discuss current issues with case managers we work with. We and the case managers are very much two sides of the same coin in ensuring those who have suffered a brain injury and indeed their families receive all the support and advice they need on the day to day challenges facing those who have been affected, keeping in sight the key aim of maximising quality of life. You can a little read more about what a case manager does in our resource centre here on the site.

This evening’s seminar is a discussion on the issue of how case managers keep records of their involvement, documenting their goals and monitoring progress - and how this can benefit their clients who have suffered head injuries. I’m sure it will be an enthusiastic discussion – I’m looking forward to it and will let you know how it goes.