After suffering a leg injury in an accident, you may be wondering how to claim compensation. Leg injuries can cause a great deal of pain and suffering. Working and getting around can be a problem for weeks or months after a leg accident. Additionally, if you were left handling the costs of missed work and medical bills due to your leg injury, compensation could help.
This article will explain who is eligible to seek compensation in a leg injury claim. We discuss the duty of care that certain parties owe you in public, at work, and on the roads to help clarify who may be liable for your injuries.
Our guide then looks at common causes of leg injuries, and we give a few examples of how this can happen. Evidence is also discussed, and we explore how it can be used to support your leg injury compensation claim.
Furthermore, you may want to know how much your claim could be worth. We explain how a leg injury compensation amount could be calculated when a successful claim is made. To finish the guide, we explain the many benefits of instructing a personal injury solicitor to handle your claim for leg injury compensation under a No Win No Fee agreement.
If you would like to discuss your particular case, you can contact one of the friendly advisors on our team. They can help answer your questions and offer you free advice. They can be reached via any of the following methods:
- Use our live chat option below to ask a question about the leg injury claims process.
- Fill out our online contact form
- Call us on 0800 408 7825 to see what your claim might be worth.
Choose A Section
- Can I Make A Leg Injury Claim?
- What Are Common Causes Of A Leg Injury?
- How Much Compensation For A Leg Injury Claim?
- What Evidence Could Help Me Make A Leg Injury Compensation Claim?
- Can You Claim Leg Injury Compensation With A No Win No Fee Solicitor?
- More Resources About Leg Injury Claims
Can I Make A Leg Injury Claim?
To be confident that you qualify to make a personal injury claim, you need to meet three criteria:
- A duty of care applied at the time and place of your accident.
- The duty was not met.
- As a direct result, you can prove you suffered an injury.
Duties of care apply in many different areas. We now focus on three main places where you could suffer a leg injury because this duty was not met:
Accidents At Work
All UK employers owe a duty of care to their employees. This is stated within the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HASAWA). This legislation places an obligation on employers to take steps considered both practicable and reasonable to prevent employees from being harmed while working. One example of a breach is failing to ensure floor surfaces are in good repair. A failure to do so could result in a slip, trip and fall and cause a leg injury.
Accidents In A Public Place
The Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 states that those in control of areas accessible to the general public must take steps to ensure the reasonable safety of those using the space as intended. For example, failure to respond to complaints about a hazardous escalator could be considered as a breach of their duty, and could also result in severe injuries.
Road Traffic Accidents
Road users owe each other a duty of care to avoid causing injury and damage to themselves and others. As part of their duty, all road users need to adhere to relevant sections of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and the Highway Code. An example of a breach of duty of care involves a driver failing to come to a stop at a crossing, hitting a pedestrian and causing the pedestrian to suffer multiple leg fractures.
What Are The Main Types Of Leg Injury?
Some examples of common leg injuries that could be suffered in an accident include:
- Cuts and bruises.
- Soft tissue injuries.
- Dislocations at any point along the leg from hip to knee and ankle.
- Compound and comminited fractures to the humerus, tibia or femur.
- Crush injuries and amputations to the whole leg, below the knee, the foot and the toes.
To see whether you may be eligible to claim compensation for a leg injury you have suffered in an accident, you can contact our advisors.
What Are Common Causes Of A Leg Injury?
There are numerous ways that a leg injury could occur. Some examples include:
- A spillage is not cleaned within a timely manner or is left without warning signs in the stockroom of a supermarket. An employee slips and falls on this spillage suffering a leg fracture.
- Faulty handrails on a pub staircase were left unrepaired (despite complaints), and this failure caused a customer to lose their footing, fall and break their leg in two places.
- A motorist was driving the wrong way down a one-way street and collided with another driver in a head-on collision that crushed both their legs.
Your precise injury circumstances may differ. Take this opportunity to access guidance about your potential leg injury claim by getting in touch with our team.
How Much Compensation For A Leg Injury Claim?
If you make a successful leg injury claim, the compensation settlement could be formed of two heads of loss. The first one compensates you for the physical or psychological injuries you have experienced, including their pain and suffering. This is called general damages. The other looks at the financial harm caused by the leg injury and is referred to as special damages.
Sitting for an independent medical assessment may be part of the claims process. The report generated from this helps those involved to calculate possible compensation. In addition to this, publications like the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) are consulted. This document lists guideline compensation brackets for a broad cross-section of injuries.
Using its entries for a leg injury, we have created a table below to illustrate how much compensation you may receive for varying severities of leg injuries. However, they are guidelines only as each leg injury claim will vary. Also, the top entry is not from the JCG but is included to show you how compensation for severe injuries and special damages could be awarded.
Compensation Guidelines
| Injury Area | Severity | Award Guidelines |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Types of Severe Leg Injury and Special Damages | Severe | Up to £1 million plus |
| Leg | (a) Amputations - Loss of Both Legs (i) | £293,850 to £344,150 |
| (a) Amputations - Both Legs Below (ii) Knee | £245,900 to £329,620 | |
| (a) Amputations - Above Knee One (iii) Leg | £127,930 to £167,760 | |
| (a) Amputations - Below Knee on One Leg (iv) | £119,570 to £162,290 | |
| (b) Severe (i) Most Serious Short of Amputation | £117,460 to £165,860 | |
| (b) Severe (ii) Very Serious | £66,920 to £109,290 | |
| (b) Severe (iii) Serious | £47,840 to £66,920 | |
| (b) Severe (iv) Moderate | £33,880 to £47,840 | |
| (c) Less Serious (i) Incomplete recovery from fractures or serious soft tissue injuries | £21,920 to £33,880 | |
| (c) Less Serious (ii) Simple femur fractures | £11,120 to £17,180 | |
| (c) Less Serious (iii) Simple tibia or fibula fractures | Up to £14,450 |
Special damages may also form part of your leg injury compensation amount. Examples of the costs you could claim back under this heading include:
- Medical and rehabilitation expenses.
- The cost of travel to appointments.
- Care expenses.
- Loss of earnings for time needed off work.
You must have documented evidence of these losses. Therefore, it’s important to keep all payslips, invoices and travel receipts that show incurred costs related to your injuries.
You can also call our team to talk about general and special damages in more detail. They may also connect you with a personal injury solicitor on our panel who could help you with claiming compensation.
What Evidence Could Help Me Make A Leg Injury Compensation Claim?
Evidence acts as the foundation of a personal injury claim. But the evidence you gather must show how a breach of care duty caused your injuries. Therefore, some examples of supporting evidence include the following:
- Medical records, scans and X-rays that prove your injuries.
- CCTV or dashcam footage that captured the accident.
- The contact information for any eyewitnesses who are able to provide a supporting statement later.
- Photos of the leg injury and the cause of the accident.
If you would like to discuss your leg injury claim, please give one of our knowledgeable advisors a call. They can also outline the various ways a personal injury lawyer could assist you during the claims procedure, particularly with the gathering of evidence, if you choose to work with one.
Is There A Time Limit When Claiming Leg Injury Compensation?
The Limitation Act 1980 applies a standard three-year time limit for personal injury claims. This typically starts from the date of the accident and injury itself. There can be variations to this, for example:
- Claimants under 18 have their time limits paused. A litigation friend can be appointed to act on their behalf. However, if the litigation friend makes no claim, a 3-year time frame to claim themselves can start from the date the minor turns 18.
- Also, time limits are on pause for claimants who lack mental capacity. A litigation friend can act for them or, they can make a claim independently from the date that mental capacity returns. In this instance, they would have 3 years to start their claim from this recovery date.
Why not speak to an advisor to see if you are eligible to make a leg injury claim? As well as time limits, they will help answer all other questions about your claims eligibility.
Can You Claim Leg Injury Compensation With A No Win No Fee Solicitor?
The personal injury solicitors on our panel have decades of experience handling various types of claims. They can confidently guide you through each stage of the process, from gathering evidence to negotiating the best settlement on your behalf.
If our advisors find that your claim qualifies, and you decide to use our services, they can connect you with a personal injury solicitor from our panel. The solicitors on our panel usually offer a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) to their clients, which is a version of a No Win No Fee contract. Broadly, this offers the following advantages:
- There aren’t any upfront fees to commence work on your claim.
- There are no solicitors’ fees for services provided as the claim moves forward.
- In addition to this, only a small percentage is deducted from the compensation awarded in a successful claim outcome. The percentage that this fee can be is capped by the law. This means that you will keep the majority of your compensation.
- Lastly, no solicitors fees for completed services apply at all should the claim fail.
If this sounds of interest to you, you can to an advisor to see whether you may be eligible to work with a No Win No Fee solicitor on our panel for your leg injury claim.
Discover more by:
- Calling us on 0800 408 7825
- Using our live discussion box to see what your claim might be worth.
- Filling out our online contact form for an immediate response.
More Resources About Leg Injury Claims
As well as this guide about leg injury claims, you might find these others useful:
- Here we provide a case study for a £16,000 payout for a simple fracture to the leg and special damages.
- This guide provides a £45,000 compensation case study for PTSD and crushed leg injuries.
- Also, how to make hip injury claims is looked at here.
Further Resources:
- Read information about a broken leg injury from the NHS.
- Learn whether you could be eligible to receive Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) with this guide from Gov.UK.
- The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents are a charity dedicated to reducing accidents. Learn more about their vision and mission.
Thank you for reading this guide on making a leg injury claim with us. If you would like to discuss your specific case with us, you can contact our advisors.