Is Solicitors offer of £5K compensation fair? Trying to make a v. long story short...

[TheBeanAndTheBee]

DP was seriously injured in a road accident on a bus outside the UK 10 yrs ago. Has lost large section of his leg, was unable to walk for a year. He now is able to walk albeit with serious limp. He has already had a serious relapse, and was unable to walk, obviously we do not know if/when this may happen again, & what the future holds.

His travel insurance covered legal expenses of £30K in order to pursue a case of compensation against bus company. This money has all now been spent by UK solicitors, on what we don't quite know(!), but it turns out that the case has still not even gone to the 1st stage of court process.

We have formally complained to the solicitors in the UK, they have admitted lying about the progress of the case & that they have not behaved in a competent manner.

They originally offered compensation of £2.5K & have now doubled offer to £5K.

Does this sound like a fair & reasonable sum of compensation? To put it in perspective the claim is for around half a million. Due to their incompetence, we will have lost out on 10 yrs of having that money. Moving forward we also now have to finance the case ourselves (money we don't have) as original pot of legal cover has been spent.

We have not approached the legal ombudsman as yet, as have been trying to resolve with solicitors directly.

Does their offer sound fair? Or should we go to ombudsman? Or should we look into suing them???

Thank you fuckwittery

Yes cailindana that's pretty much how we feel, was being restrained in order to solicit opinions! I hadn't even mentioned the point at which they "forgot" to tell us that the insurance monies had run out and we owed them 25k!! (plus vat!) all this while DP was undergoing more surgery and I was heavily pregnant. Many sleepless nights were had at that point. After a 19 page complaint letter, those costs have mysteriously disappeared....

Thank you so much for those contacts fuckwittery

Just to give you an idea of some compensation amounts:

In 1991 I had a whiplash injury that fractured a dorsal spine in my neck when I was hit from behind at about 60mph. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of some training, and 18 months later was still taking anti-inflammatories and co-proxamol in order to be able to take exams due to the pain caused when writing under exam conditions. I failed the exams, and when I passed them at the re-sit the market had changed and I was made redundant.

In 1994, when it had got as good as it was going to, someone else hit me again and shook it all up again for a period of about 6 months.

Although not known at the time, the original accident destroyed my thryoid function.

The compensation I received, was £17,500 for the original accident, and about £2,000 for the second one, just to give you an idea. It included a loss of earnings element as due to the recession in the early 1990s it was incredibly difficult to get another job in the same field as my training was interrupted.

Good luck with your claim.