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!