Van Driver Awarded Compensation for Wrist Injury Resulting from Road Traffic Accident.
Mr Beaney, 26 at the time of the accident, was injured in a road traffic accident when the van he was driving collided with a car that had pulled out from a side road into his path. Liability was admitted.
Mr Beaney suffered an injury to his wrist. He attended hospital and was diagnosed as suffering from a fracture to one of the small bones in his wrist. He was put in plaster and told to rest.
Mr Beaney worked laying cable, manually digging up roads. He was the leader of a small gang who were paid by the job, rather than salaried, with the client taking the largest percentage of the pay as gang leader.
Our client returned to work after 6 weeks but found that he was still having problems. He was unable to carry on with his work. He attempted to find alternative work, but being unqualified, found this difficult.
We arranged for an MRI scan on our client’s wrist and instructed a hand specialist in Harley Street to examine him. It was found that there were further fractures to the hand that had not been noticed on the earlier x rays. Unfortunately, due to the lack of treatment, our client was suffering from osteo necrosis ( the fractured bone had begun to die ).
We arranged for the Defendant to pay for an urgent operation to remove the dead part of bone in the hand. The operation was a success, but our client would never be able to return to the type of work he was doing prior to the accident or any other heavy physical manual labour.
Our client was able to return to work after the operation doing light labouring for a building contractor.
A report was obtained from an employment consultant who indicated a future loss of income, although not a significant annual drop, plus a claim for disadvantage on the labour market and loss of congenial employment.
The case was settled one month before trial for a total of £210,000, general damages being estimated at approximately £18,000, past loss of earnings at approximately £50,000, the remainder being for future loss of earnings and disadvantage on the labour market.