What are Special Damages?

General damages are the element of your compensation that cover the pain and suffering you have incurred as a result of the injuries you have suffered.

The Special Damages are the financial losses that you have suffered as a result of the accident. Special Damages can include a number of items, the most common claims for special damages are:

• Loss of Earnings
• Care
• Medical Expenses
• Travel Expenses
• Damage to clothing

As part of the claim process, we will take information from you on the losses that you have suffered, usually to claim for loss of earnings. We will need to prove your income before the accident and show the income you have lost as a result of the accident. In more serious injuries this loss of earnings claim, could relate to your entire working life and form a substantial part of your claim.

You are also entitled to claim for the care that family and friends have provided to you following your injury, we would need details of what care they provided and how often this care was provided. A care claim for family or friends would include them helping you with cleaning, cooking, doing the shopping and driving you to appointments.

Medical expenses can often be substantial, if you have a private health insurance policy, you will often have an obligation under that policy to seek to recoup the expenditure of the insurer as part of your claim. If medical experts recommend you undergo further surgery or treatment, we can also seek to recoup this as part of the claim.

In addition to this above we can also seek to recover the outlay you incur as a result of travel expenses related to the accident, such as a taxi to and from the hospital.

There are many elements to your claim and some of these expenses may not arise for some years, therefore it is important to have someone with specialist knowledge of acting in personal injury claims to represent you.