Compensation Interim payments or Early payment of damages

Compensation Interim Payments from Beardsells Personal Injury Solicitors

Compensation interim payments are payments made to the victim of an accident who requires immediate payment. Personal injury claims solicitors often have to deal with cases involving clients who have fallen on very hard times because of their injury. Depending on the type of accident, it may have caused them a big financial loss. It could be something which has caused them to stop working, with all the disastrous consequent losses that follow on after your wages stop being paid while you’re off ‘sick’, or perhaps some other financial problem, which can often lead to compensation interim payments.

For example, they had a vehicle that was heavily damaged which they couldn’t afford to repair – perhaps because it was written off, and it was only insured ‘third party fire and theft,’ so they didn’t have an insurance company to pay out for the value of the vehicle.

If there is a dispute on liability in a road accident case, it’s often impossible to obtain an early payment from the opponent’s insurance company. After all, if they don’t accept liability, why should they make you a payment?

We have been dealing with this type of situation for more years than we care to remember! The fact is that, when you have had an accident, we can advise you very quickly as to what your prospects of success will be, and if we take your case on, there is a strong chance that we will be able to apply for an early payment for you. In legal terms, we refer to this as an ‘interim payment’; it’s ‘interim’ because it’s just a proportion of the total value of the claim which we are looking to recover for you.

Where an accident victim has a significant injury, and there is no dispute on liability, and that person is unable to work, we can usually make a compensation interim payments request to the insurance company we are pursuing the claim against. It is quite possible that the insurer will be reluctant to make a payment – they usually are – but we will argue strenuously for an early payment to be made so as to offset any shortfall in your earnings, or to meet other immediate losses – such as the cost of getting your car back on the road; the cost of purchasing protective clothing for injured motorcyclists, etc. Even if there are no specific financial losses, we can often obtain an interim payment as an advance on your compensation.

Compensation Interim payments

A recent example of the way compensation interim payments work – I have been dealing with a case for a client who had a sudden fall on a slippery substance which was at a supermarket checkout. The floor hadn’t been checked or cleaned; the client didn’t see the ‘stuff’ on the floor, and when he slipped on it, his legs went from under him and he landed heavily on his lower back.

It caused him to be off work for several months, during which time he only received a small amount of sick pay, and when he came to us, he was really struggling financially. We pursued his claim as fast as possible, obtained an early medical report which gave a diagnosis of his injury, and made it clear that he was likely to continue suffering for several more months at least. We were able to use that report to obtain £5,000.00 as a compensation interim payment for him.

His compensation interim payments claim will continue and probably will not be concluded until next year – he has to have a scan and possible future treatment – but in the meantime, he is now back at work, and we have helped to get him out of his financial difficulty by obtaining the interim payment. This is the type of thing which all good personal injury solicitors should be able to do for you.

So, if you or a relative needs a compensation interim payment because of financial problems caused by an accident, just telephone or email us and we will do everything that we can to help. We have been dealing with these types of cases for years on a no win no fee basis, and our advice is always free of charge, so, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Call now for Personal Injury Advice on 0800 677 1911 or from your mobile on 0333 577 2251.

Written by Wai

Wai Yi is our joint Managing Director. She joined the firm originally as an articled clerk to the founder, Keith Beardsell and qualified as a solicitor in 1989. She became an equity partner in 1997, and upon the creation of Beardsells LLP in 2011, she became joint Managing Director. You can follow Wai Yi on Google+.

See all posts by Wai