Court proceedings - car accident

[dxd27]

The Legal board is probably more suitable but I'm posting here for traffic and hoping somebody else has experience.

Basically I had a car accident (not my fault) a few months ago and put in a personal injury claim. Fast forward to now and my solicitor and the other party have been going back and forth regarding the offer for my settlement amount. This is the third counter offer which they have come back with and it is very low and not anywhere near what my solicitor has advised and they have said I should reject and issue court proceedings.

Is this norm for personal injury claims? I literally have no idea and the thought of going to court fills me with a lot of anxiety, I'm still suffering from the accident itself without having to worry about this too

It’s the norm if you don’t accept any of their offers, yes.

Its the norm for any litigation where you cannot reach an ageable out of court settlement.

PM me if you wish to be more private - I work in this industry - what’s your injury and how much are your respective offers? And lastly what process is the claim in OIC or MOJ Portal?

Is this norm for personal injury claims?

It was when I was run over and ended up with hip surgery and a week in hospital

Basically the insurer's solicitors fannied around as long as they could until mine said "see you in court". Obviously none of them want to risk that, since while there's a usual scale of payments according to the actual injury a court can award whatever it likes, so they then settled quickly (and paid a lot more than they'd have had to do if they'd done it straight away)

Is this norm for personal injury claims?

Yes, did your solicitor not advise you of the process?

Yes, but in all reality it’ll settle before it actually reaches court. It’s a game of seeing who will blink first

I had a similar situation. My insurance company dealt with it all though and at each step recommended what to do. There was a lot of back and forth with the other side offering amounts much lower than my insurance company's estimate of what I should receive and my side recommending that I reject it. After 3 or 4 offers the other side said accept our offer or go to court. The solicitor provided by the insurance company told me not to worry and it was unlikely to get that far because the other side would ultimately back down. They were right and I got another offer just before we were due to go to court that was pretty much what I had been told to expect. It all took a long time though.

@Mimi15 I will drop you a PM

@SophiaJ8 No. To be honest the solicitors who have been dealing with it have been awful!

What were the injuries? DH and I have both had minor accidents with minor injury, over ten years apart. I got nearly 5x what he did as my accident was ten years earlier and my injuries were way more minor than his (and we were both explicitly honest about the injuries). Unless injuries are severe, I think the payouts are generally quite low - but hard to say how reasonable without you giving an indication.

Also neither of us went to court.

@iNoticed Whiplash, back pain and stress/anxiety brought on as a result of the accident

Based on DH’s experience, and the whiplash tables (which you can google and are set out in law), I’d expect less than £1,000 for that if the issues are resolved within 6-9 months, plus covering any physio or therapy costs.

How does that compare with your offer?

If they’re offering within the whiplash tables, and the back pain is equivalent to the whiplash pain, then I wouldn’t personally take it to court (but IANAL).

10 years ago I got £3k for very similar, and I only claimed because I was on minimum wage working in a warehouse and I wanted to claim for 2 days of lost wages that I couldn’t afford to lose - I was astounded by how much they agreed.