Crush injuries can have a significant effect on your daily life, work and even your finances. If you have suffered this type of injury, you may be wondering whether you could be eligible to make a crush injury compensation claim.
Within this guide, we examine who could be eligible to make a personal injury claim for any crush injuries suffered in an accident. As well as explaining the criteria you’ll need to meet, we’ve also provided some example scenarios of how such an accident could occur.
Proving the third party is responsible for your accident is a key part of any claim. You will see detailed information on the evidence you can use to demonstrate who was at fault for your injuries.
You will see a section on how compensation is calculated in personal injury claims, with a compensation table for your reference. The final section of our guide examines the No Win No Fee agreement our expert panel of solicitors can offer their services under.
For a free assessment of your eligibility to claim or to ask any questions you may have, get in touch with our team today via:
- Phone on 0800 408 7827
- Our online “contact us” form
- The live chat button on your screen
Select A Section
- Can You Claim For A Crush Injury?
- How To Sue For Crush Injury Compensation
- What Are Common Types Of Crush Injuries?
- How Much Compensation For A Severe Crush Injury?
- What Is The Crush Injury Claim Time Limit?
- Why Claim Crush Injury Compensation On A No Win No Fee Basis?
- Learn More About Personal Injury Claims
Can You Claim For A Crush Injury?
Crush injury compensation can be claimed after a variety of different accidents. We’ve provided some example scenarios in the sections below, however, the general eligibility criteria for a crush injury claim are as follows:
- You were owed a duty of care by a third party.
- That third party failed to uphold this duty in some way.
- This failure resulted in an accident in which you experienced a crush injury.
Accidents At Work
Employers are required to take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of their workers as per the Health and Safety At Work etc. Act 1974. This duty can be met in various different ways depending on the work being carried out.
To aid employers in meeting this duty, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Britain’s regulator for health and safety in the workplace, routinely publish guidance on a variety of topics, including providing training and machinery safety.
An example of where you could claim crush injury compensation after an accident at work could be:
You work in an engineering firm as a machine operator. Your employer had failed to carry out the necessary maintenance checks on one of the machines and instructed you to use the machine regardless. A malfunction resulting in your hand being pulled into the mechanism, resulting in a substantial crush injury and damage to multiple fingers.
Road Traffic Accidents
The duty of care on the roads works a little differently than other personal injury claims. Rather than a single third party, every road user collectively owes a duty of care to all other road users to use the roads safely and responsibly to ensure each other’s safety and reduce the risk of injuries or damage.
Road users are required to abide by both the Road Traffic Act 1988 and the Highway Code as part of their duty of care. Failures to do so can result in serious road traffic accidents. An example of this has been given below:
You were turning onto a main road at a junction. A drunk driver ran through the red light and failed to stop in time, colliding with your vehicle in a serious t-bone collision. Your leg was badly crushed in the accident.
Public Place Accidents
Occupiers are those in control of public spaces, such as supermarkets and public parks, for example. They owe a duty of care under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 to take all the required measures to ensure the public’s reasonably safety while they are using that space for the purpose it was intended for.
For example, an occupier should perform regular risk assessments, address any hazards they are made of within a reasonable time frame and maintain any public equipment regularly to maintain their duty of care. A failure to do so could lead to an accident, such as:
A retail shop fails to ensure that an overhead display sign is properly secured. This causes you to suffer a severe crush injury to your chest when the sign falls onto you when you were walking underneath it.
To see whether you may have a valid personal injury claim you can contact one of our advisors.
How To Sue For Crush Injury Compensation
After any accident, no matter how minor, we always recommend seeking professional medical help. Although your health is the primary concern, the medical records of this treatment will be very useful evidence for your claim. Other evidence that could be useful when making a crush injury compensation claim include:
- Video footage such as from CCTV or dash cam devices can show how the accident occurred.
- You can also take photographs of your injuries, the scene of the accident and its cause.
- Anyone who saw the accident occur could provide a witness statement so make sure you take down their contact information.
- A diary detailing your symptoms and how your daily life has been impacted due to your injuries.
Working with a solicitor from our panel to collect evidence may be very useful. As well as helping you to assemble a thorough body of supporting evidence, a solicitor can also ensure the claim is brought within the appropriate time limit.
For further guidance on the types of evidence you can collect or for a free assessment of your eligibility to claim compensation, talk to our advisory team today. You can reach a team member 24 hours a day using the contact information given below.
What Are Common Types Of Crush Injuries?
A crush injury occurs when any part of the body is crushed between two surfaces, such as between a heavy object and the floor or between moving machinery parts. These injuries can vary widely in severity, from minor bone fractures to potentially life-threatening injuries.
Some common types of crush injury include:
- Damage to the hands and feet.
- Head injuries.
- Organ damage.
- Neck and back injuries.
- Broken bones.
- Soft tissue Injuries.
- Loss of limbs due to severe crush injuries that require amputation.
To find out more about the types of crush injuries you could claim compensation for, talk to our advisors today using the contact information provided above.
How Much Compensation For A Severe Crush Injury?
Crush injury compensation can be awarded under two different heads of loss following a successful claim. The first head is general damages, which compensate for the physical and psychological harm you experience from the crush injury.
Coming up with a possible compensation value is one of the many things a solicitor from our panel could assist you with if you have a valid claim. Those given this responsibility to value your claim for general damages can use your medical documents in conjunction with the guidelines from the Judicial College. Referred to as the JCG, this publication contains compensation guidelines for a range of injuries.
We have included some of these guidelines, which are relevant to crush injuries, in the table below. The first entry was not taken from the JCG, this is a guideline total figure for both heads of loss.
Compensation Table
| Injury Type | Severity | Guideline Compensation Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Very Severe Injuries With Additional Special Damages | Very Severe | Upt £1,000,000 and above |
| Brain Damage | Moderately Severe (b) | £267,340 to £344,150 |
| Hand | Total Effective Loss of One Hand (c) | £117,360 to £133,810 |
| Less Serious (g) | £17,640 to £35,390 | |
| Moderate (h) | £6,910 to £16,200 | |
| Chest | Continuing disability (c) | £38,210 to £66,920 |
| Leg | Severe (b) (iv) Moderate | £33,880 to £47,840 |
| Back | Moderate (b)(i) | £33,880 to £47,320 |
| Toe | Severe (c) | £16,770 to £25,710 |
Special Damages
The second of the two heads of loss, special damages, awards compensation for monetary losses that stem from your injuries. As well as immediate financial impacts, you can also receive compensation for future losses. It is, therefore, often the case that compensation paid out under special damages will be higher than that for general damages.
Examples of costs you could claim compensation for include:
- Lost earnings due to leave from work.
- Medical expenses such as prescriptions, private healthcare or other out of pocket costs.
- Transport to and from your place of work.
- Domestic support such as with cleaning or preparing meals if your injuries mean you cannot complete these tasks safely by yourself.
- Accessibility installations in your home, for example an access ramp.
When claiming special damages, you will need to provide some supporting evidence. Make sure you retain your payslips, care invoices, prescription letters and other documentation that shows the losses you incurred.
You can get a more personalised idea of what your potential compensation could be by speaking to our advisors. For your free eligibility assessment or to ask any questions about the personal injury claims process, call our team today.
What Is The Crush Injury Claim Time Limit?
Generally, the personal injury claims time limit is 3 years from the date of the accident as established by the Limitation Act 1980. However, there are circumstances in which exceptions to this can be made. These are:
- Children: Those under 18 cannot claim for themselves, so the time limit will be paused until the injured person’s 18th birthday. They will then have 3 years from this date to make a claim.
- Those without sufficient mental capacity: Injured persons who do not have the mental capacity to claim on their own behalf will have the time limit paused altogether. In cases where this capacity is recovered, the time limit is counted from the date of recovery.
In these scenarios, the court can appoint a suitable adult to act as a litigation friend for the injured person and claim on their behalf while the time limit is paused.
To learn more about the time limits for crush injury compensation claims, and to check whether any exceptions are relevant to your particular circumstances, call our advisors today.
Why Claim Crush Injury Compensation On A No Win No Fee Basis?
To find out you’re eligible to claim crush injury compensation, speak to one of our friendly advisors today. If our team decide you are eligible then a specialist solicitor from our panel of experts could offer to take your claim on a No Win No Fee basis.
The contract offered by our panel is called a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) and comes with a number of key benefits, including:
- Not paying any fees for the solicitor to begin working on the claim.
- You will also not need to pay any service fees during the claims process.
- No service fees to be paid to your solicitor should the claim be unsuccessful.
If, however, your solicitor wins the claim, you will receive personal injury compensation. A percentage of this will be taken by the solicitor as a success fee. Since the law limits this percentage, you will keep most of the compensation award.
For a free assessment of your eligibility to claim, or to ask any questions you may have, get in touch with our team today via:
- Phone on 0800 408 7827
- Our online “contact us” form
- The live chat button on your screen
Learn More About Personal Injury Claims
You can find some more of our personal injury claims guides here:
- Learn more about claiming for a broken foot injury at work with this guide.
- Learn whether you could claim compensation as a passenger in a road traffic accident.
- Advice on how to sue a supermarket for an accident.
We have included some external resources for additional information:
- The administration of first aid after an accident can be of huge importance. Find out more on the NHS website.
- You may be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay if your injuries mean you can no longer work. You can read more about the eligibility criteria on the Government website.
- The HSE has published this guide to managing risks and risk assessment at work to help employers maintain a safe workplace.
We’d like to thank you for reading our guide to claiming crush injury compensation after an accident. You can put any questions you may have to our advisors, or get a free eligibility assessment by using the contact information provided above.