Should I accept first offer for compensation?

maxliam1

Hi,

Sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place but I would welcome any advice.

I sustained an injury over a year ago whilst shopping in a major supermarket. I suffered an injury to my leg -nothing serious but enough to cause me a lot of discomfort and affect my life for 2-3 weeks. THe supermarket admitted liability and accepted that their unsafe working practices had led to my injury

I didn't wan't to go down the road of hiring a claims company but did feel that I was due some compensation. I contacted the head office directly and 1 year later they have offered me £750

I kind of feel that this isn't enough based on the fact that it was 100% theif fault and I have to wait a year!

Should I accept first offer and if I reject it, could I end up losing the initial offer?

Any advice would be gratefully recieved

Thanks

BertTheRaccoon

The period of symptoms is the relevant factor when valuing the claim. A 2-3 week period of discomfort would be worth about £1k max anyway.

If they won't budge then i would accept the offer.

jonesMUFCforever

If they have offered £750 then they will not withdraw the offer unless they can prove that it was a fraudelent claim eg you go on Facebook gloating how you screwed £xx from a supermarket.
Did you actually break any bones - were you off work (if so did you get paid by your employer?) those 2-3 weeks was there anything that you regularly do that you couldn't (keep the reply clean please LOL).
I agree £1k max would seem a fair offer.
Why not try banking the cheque and say you accept it as PART settlement and ask for another £250? They can only say no.

opinions4u

Itemise your losses for the forum.

Time, car parks at hospitals etc.

Itemise your employer's losses in sick pay.

Describe your injury.

On the face of it, £750 plus loss of earnings (or sick pay repayable to employer) plus costs incurred in managing the injury seems ok.

But why on earth are you asking a forum when a solicitor could probably have got you more and faster?

Crazy_Jamie

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

A 2-3 week period of discomfort would be worth about £1k max anyway.

If they won't budge then i would accept the offer.

And that really is £1,000 at absolute maximum. For a two to three week leg injury to reach that sort of level you would generally need something a little more than a lot of discomfort. The fact that you have had to wait a year is not relevant to the valuation of your injuries; as Bert says the most relevant factor is how long your injury took to resolve. £750 does sound fair to me on the face of it, plus any out of pocket expenses of course, so I agree with Bert that there's no harm in trying to bump them up slightly, but otherwise in the absence of further information their valuation does sound fair.

opinions4u wrote:

But why on earth are you asking a forum when a solicitor could probably have got you more and faster?

A solicitor would likely not be too keen to take this case due to it being somewhat unlikely that they would recover their legal costs, and clearly the OP would be hesitant to incur legal costs when it is not necessary. In fact as soon as a solicitor does become involved you can be sure that the insurer will not go as high as £1,000 and risk liability for legal costs as well. Then again they may go to something like £950 to make the case go away (which is standard practice for certain Defendant firms at the moment in appropriate cases), so it could go either way.

opinions4u

Crazy_Jamie wrote: »

A solicitor would likely not be too keen to take this case due to it being somewhat unlikely that they would recover their legal costs, and clearly the OP would be hesitant to incur legal costs when it is not necessary. In fact as soon as a solicitor does become involved you can be sure that the insurer will not go as high as £1,000 and risk liability for legal costs as well.

Why would the insurer have no liability for legal costs?

Crazy_Jamie

opinions4u wrote: »

Why would the insurer have no liability for legal costs?

The fast track threshold for personal injury claims is that the injury must be valued at over £1,000. If it is less than that the case is a small claim, where legal costs are not recoverable save for very limited fixed costs. Hence why it is becoming increasingly common for certain Defendant firms to offer £950 plus small claims fixed costs in cases that involve low value injuries, close liability disputes, or allegations of fraud. The alternative being that they pay, say, £1,200 for the injury but then have to pay many times that in legal costs as well. There is talk of that limit being increased (as of April the fast track threshold for claims generally increased from £5,000 to £10,000), but thus far nothing solid has been put in place.