The estimator will provide an overview of how much your claim is worth.
Claims Estimator
When you are making a personal injury claim you may be unsure what level of compensation you may receive. As explained here the Personal Injuries Board use The Book of Quantum as a general guide to the amounts that may be awarded. This guide was produced in 2004 and updated in October 2016 and is used as a guide. It is important to note that this is not a rigid format, the awards given in regards a personal injury will always be assessed on an individual basis.
The severity of the injury is considered, how it will affect your life now and in the future. Categories include: ‘substantially recovered’, ‘significant ongoing’, ‘serious and permanent conditions’. When awarding a personal injury claim the Injuries Board will consider the effect your injury has had on your life.
All InjuriesBoard.ie awards have a duty to be in line with Court awards. Where we provide advice to decline an award, it is based on 25 years experience of assessing the value of claims to achieve a more favourable outcome for our clients.
If you have suffered a personal injury which is not your fault you may be entitled to begin a claim today. Our expert team at Gary Matthews Solicitors can deal with all aspects of your claim and achieve the best possible outcome for you.
Considering the effect of multiple injuries
The Book of Quantum makes it clear that if you’ve suffered multiple injuries you do not simply find each category in the Book and then add up the respective values for each injury. Instead you must identify the most significant injury sustained and use that to determine the value range which you fall into. The additional injuries which you have sustained may then result in a minor adjustment within the value range applying to your most significant injury.
Will my assessment show how the Book of Quantum was used to arrive at the amount calculated for pain and suffering?
Regrettably, the answer is no. If you’ve read this far you’ll have determined that it is quite easy to see how different people given the Book of Quantum could come up with wildly different figures if presented with the same set of facts.
This means that it would be of significant assistance to claimants when deciding on whether or not to accept an assessment to see the rationale which was relied upon to arrive at the compensation figure which has been ascribed to their pain and suffering.
However, the assessment will simply have one figure assigned to “general damages for pain and suffering” meaning that you will have no idea which category of injury the PIAB assessor deemed to be most significant or how they varied the amount of your assessment to take account of any secondary injuries which you may have sustained.