Elbow Injury Claims

QUICK CHECKLIST: Do I Have A Valid Elbow Injury Claim?

You should be able to make an elbow injury claim if your injury happened:

• In the last three years, and;
• Someone else was to blame for your injury; and
• If another person owed you a duty of care.

The elbow is an incredibly important joint in the body. The elbow is utilised every day in basically every aspect of our personal and professional lives. If you have suffered an elbow injury, this will likely affect your ability to work, cook and clean, participate in sports or do any of the other things you love. A severe elbow injury can require a long period of treatment or therapy before you can begin to move and use your elbow joint properly. Besides the physical, emotional consequences however, a serious elbow injury can also have serious financial implications for the victim.

Elbow injury claims can arise as a result of injuries sustained in a workplace accident, in an accident in a public place or because of a car accident. There are other forms of elbow injury that develop over time, due to repetitive strain on the muscles and tendons of the elbow area. The majority of these repetitive strain elbow injuries arise in the workplace. Free Legal Justice has dealt with countless types of elbow injury claims before, and we are well placed to advise you on your potential elbow injury compensation claim.

Here Are Some Of The Ways in Which You Can Sustain An Elbow Injury:

Once-off Elbow Injuries

Some injuries occur as a one-off event, for example if you fall heavily on your elbow, or you are hit by a heavy object, or you are crushed after being involved in a car accident.

Dislocated elbow

If one of the bones forming the elbow joint gets knocked out of place, it results in a dislocated elbow. This type of injury can occur easily when you fall to the floor and put your hand out to catch yourself during the fall. One of the more common causes is when you put your hand out to catch yourself during a fall.

Fractured elbow

If one of the bones in your arm breaks at the elbow joint, you will have suffered a fracture. This type of accident usually happens with a sudden impact or impact on the elbow region, as you might get in a car accident. Be careful with elbow injuries – sometimes you can still move the elbow after you’ve been injured. If you’re in pain and your elbow doesn’t look right, it could be broken. If you experience any pain or unusual swelling and bruising to your elbow after an accident, you need to immediately seek medical assistance. Even if you have no symptoms after an accident, it is a good idea to get a medical check-up to make sure there is no hidden injury that will cause you harm later on.

Strains and sprains

When you stretch or tear your muscles, you have suffered a strain. This happens when you push it a bit far – you exert yourself a bit too much.  When muscles get stretched or torn, it’s called a strain. When it’s ligaments, it’s a sprain. A strain is an injury to a muscle, tendon or ligament caused by over stretching, resulting in tears in the affected tissue. At work, you can easily get a strain when you put too much pressure on your elbow muscles, like when you lift heavy objects. Where the strain or sprain is severe, surgical repair may be required for torn muscles, tendons or ligaments.

Wear-and-Tear Injuries

Other injuries occur over time, as you repeat certain actions and put wear and tear on your elbow. You can injure yourself playing sports or in any number of work settings, from the manufacturing industry to the confines of an office.

Bursitis

Bursitis is caused by repeating the same movement over and over, from an accident or from an infection. Bursa are small sacs with fluid in them, which are found in your joints (like an elbow joint) to help cushion your bones, tendons, and muscles. They also help skin slide over bone.

Bursitis can happen when an elbow sustains a severe blow. If you suffer a blow to your elbow, these bursa can form (as fluid filled sacs under the skin), to protect the damaged area. Symptoms are extreme pain, swelling and tenderness in the affected area. In severe cases, the bursa may need to be drained by a medical professional.

Pinched Nerves

You might be familiar with carpal tunnel syndrome, where a nerve that passes through your wrist gets squeezed and causes some wrist and arm issues. You can have similar problems in your elbow. Trapped nerves may cause burning or numbness in your hand, arm, and fingers.

Repetitive Strain Injury

This type of injury usually occurs as a result of overuse of the elbow joint. The ligaments of the elbow can become inflamed due to this overuse, resulting in extreme pain and decreased mobility.  This injury is often referred to as repetitive strain injury. Over time, the pain associated with this condition can make it gradually more difficult for the person to carry out repetitive work-related tasks as well as personal routines. Treatments range from anti-inflammatories and pain medication, to wearing a supportive elbow brace.

When to Call Your Doctor

If you think you’ve fractured or dislocated your elbow, you should go to the emergency room.

You should call your doctor if you have elbow pain that doesn’t go away with rest and ice, or pain that doesn’t go away even when you’re not using your arm. If you have intense pain, swelling, and bruising around your elbow you should also seek medical attention.

Some elbow injuries take time to develop. If you develop pain, swelling, or redness that gets worse over time, make sure to visit a doctor to assess your elbow. Similarly, if you find you are having difficulty using your elbow, such as bending your arm and lifting things, you should seek medical assistance.

Workplace Elbow Injury Claims

While any employee is at risk of suffering a work-related elbow injury, some employees are more likely to suffer these injuries than others. This includes people working in hospitals or as other care workers, those working in factories and on construction industries, as well as those in the retail industry including waiters, cashiers, chefs, shop assistants and bar staff.

Injuries at work can easily occur as a result of:

• Ladder accidents
• Machinery accidents
• Manual handling accidents
• Office accidents
• Scaffolding accidents
• Slip, trips and falls
• Building site accidents
• Crane accidents
• Dangerous practice and procedures
• Injury on dangerous premises
• Falling objects
• Inadequate training
• Lack of personal protection equipment

It is not always obvious who or what is responsible for the accident at work that caused your injury. In most cases your employer is ultimately liable for the harm you have suffered, and will have beached the duty of care that they have towards you because they failed to ensure your health and safety at work. If an employer does not comply with this duty, and their failure to do so results in an accident or injury at work, there will be sufficient grounds for the employee to make an elbow injury claim.

If your elbow injury was caused by the negligence of another employee, you should not worry that this person will be personally liable to pay the compensation. As a result of a principle known as vicarious liability, your employer will be responsible for all actions of their employees, whether negligent or otherwise. This means that an employer will be liable for the elbow injury that an employee has suffered at work. Employers are required by law to take out liability insurance to cover claims by employees that have suffered injuries at work.

Car Accident Elbow Injury Claims

It isn’t just drivers who can claim for injuries sustained on the road – car accidents can cause injuries to all sorts of people, including passengers, drivers, and innocent bystanders. All of these people may be affected by car accident in some way, and may each have a potential compensation claim if they were not the cause of the accident.

If you have been involved in a car accident, there are many possible elbow injuries that you could suffer as a result. Elbow and arm injuries are extremely common in car accidents, as these incidents can be hard-hitting on the upper part of the body, especially for the driver and front passengers of the vehicle. The body contain many muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other soft tissues that could be damaged in a car accident.

If you are the driver of a vehicle, you are usually close to the steering wheel and to the front windscreen.  If a car accident ensues, you could be crushed by the force of the accident and your elbow could be damaged by the impact. If someone is flung from the car, they could land on their hand or arm and suffer serious injuries to their elbow. Even if the crash happens at a relatively slow speed, a car accident can still exert a huge amount of force on those inside the vehicle. On the other hand, if you are flung from the car involved in an accident, or hit by the car as a pedestrian, by landing on your hands or arm you could suffer serious damage to your elbow.

If you have been in a car accident and have experienced an elbow injury as a result, you should consider getting in touch with a friendly Free Legal Justice claims handler today to find out more about your elbow injury claim. At the end of the day, if the car accident was not your fault, then you should not have to pay for your physical injuries or for the financial consequences of such injury.

Public Place Elbow Injury Claims

Free Legal Justice has vast experience in handling personal injury claims which have arisen in public places, including theme parks, shopping malls, restaurants and bars, parks, schools, theatres, carnivals and music concerts. If you’ve suffered an elbow injury whilst in a public place and you believe it was due to negligence of another individual or body, you may be entitled to claim compensation. Shop and restaurant owners, councils, businesses and other public bodies have a duty to take reasonable measures to prevent members of the public from being harmed on the premises under their control.

When we look at injuries occurring in public spaces, the accident generally involves a slip or a trip on a road or a pavement, or in a shopping mall. The person who is ultimately in control of the area will be responsible for any injuries that have been sustained by innocent members of the public. If your accident took place on a council owned property, such as a public walkway or a government-run park, you may be entitled to a personal injury compensation claim against the local authority, if the accident was due to their negligence.

When instituting a claim against a Local Authority for not maintaining a road or sidewalk, any other public space, we will need to prove that the local council had negligent in their duty to the public by failing to keep the public place safe. We will show that it was not reasonable for the local council to let the public space to fall into such a state of disrepair.

What Is The Value Of My Elbow Injury Claim?

It is difficult to put a general value on elbow injury claims. How much compensation an individual will receive for an elbow injury claim varies from person to person, and from case to case. To get an idea of how much compensation you can claim, it is useful to know what the purpose of the compensation settlement is in the eyes of the law.

General Damages

Firstly, your compensation should provide payment for the pain and suffering you have wrongfully experienced as a result of the elbow injury that you have suffered. This includes both physical and psychological pain and suffering endured as a result of the accident, and in legal terms is known as ‘general damages’.

The general damages part of your elbow injury claim is calculated by comparing your independent medical report with the official Judicial Board Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases. This prescribed guideline sets out how much can be claimed as general damages for different levels of injury. The amount of compensation will depend on aspects such as how serious your injury is, complicating factors surrounding the injury, as well as the length of the recovery period.

To give you a general idea, we have drawn up a table of the average amounts that you can expect to receive for elbow injuries.

Elbow injury compensation amounts

Nature Of Elbow Injury	Details	Average Compensation
Severe Elbow injury	Serious, severe and disabling injury   Long period of recovery, if any	Between £31,220 and £43,710
Moderate Elbow injury	Some long-term problems	Between £12,480 and £25,510
Mild Elbow Injury	No significant long-term problems	Up to £10,040

The amounts mentioned in the table are not to be taken as fixed compensation amounts. These figures are merely a general guideline to the possible compensation that can be claimed in elbow injury claims.

Special Damages

Secondly, your compensation claim should seek to recover the money you have lost, or will lose, as a result of the accident and the injuries you have suffered. This includes loss of future and past earnings as well as the cost of medical treatment that you have had, or will have in future as a result of your injuries. Receiving financial compensation for these expenses can be a lifeline for our clients, especially if they cannot return to work as a result of the injury, or can only return in a reduced capacity because of your injuries.

Special damages forming part of your elbow injury claim include compensation for any additional expenses that you have had to incur as a result of the accident. This is a broad category of damages, and can range from loss of past and future income, to costs of rehabilitation sessions, to traveling expenses, supplementary childcare expenses, as well as nursing and household adaptations that you have made to help you live with your injuries. Your accident claims handler from Free Legal Justice will explain to you which amounts will contribute to your special damages claim.  It is important to know that special damages can only be claimed if you are able to present some sort of evidence of the expenses. You need to show that you have already incurred these expenses, or will in future incur these expenses as a result of the injury, for example by presenting receipts, reports, payslips and other documentation relevant to the damages.

In summary, the amount of compensation awarded elbow injury claims differ on a case by case basis, as the compensation amounts are calculated relative to the seriousness of the specific claimant’s injuries and quantum of their deemed financial loss.

How Much Will It Cost To Make An Elbow Injury Claim?

Free Legal Justice offers all our clients with valid personal injury claims the option of working with a No Win No Fee agreement. Under a No Win No Fee agreement, if your claim is unsuccessful, you won’t have to pay a thing for the work that Free Legal Justice has done on your case. For thousands of clients, this means that they can have access to the financial compensation that they deserve, without any financial risk hanging over their heads.

If we help you to win your claim, Free Legal Justice will charge you a success fee of an average of 25% of the total compensation received.. Your devoted accident solicitor will be sure to discuss the success fee with you upfront, and the agreed success fee will be confirmed in writing before we start to work on your claim.

For all clients who choose to work with Free Legal Justice on No Win No Fee personal injury claims, we promise that:

• You will receive free legal advice from one of our expert solicitors as to how to proceed with your personal injury claim;
• A member of the Free Legal Justice Team will be available to speak to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to help you with any questions that you might have regarding your accident claim;
• If you are unsuccessful in your claim, we will not charge you any legal fees for the work that we have done on your case;
• You won’t pay a thing from your own pocket;
• We will help you to recover the maximum amount of compensation in the shortest possible time; and
• We will manage your case efficiently, keep you updated on its progress, and will try to make the entire compensation claim process as stress-free as possible for you.

How Do I Make An Elbow Injury Claim?

If you think you might be eligible for an elbow injury claim, it is important to take steps as soon as possible to start your compensation claim. The first step in finding out if you have a valid elbow injury claim is to speak to one of Free Legal Justice’s friendly team of experts. Our personal injury claim specialists will help you through the entire claim process, from beginning to end. Free Legal Justice will help you to collect all the necessary details and information about the accident, and quickly be able to assess the best way to help you make your elbow injury claim and get the justice you deserve.

If you contact our claims team now, you will receive free professional advice on the merits of your injury claim, so that you can understand your legal position before you take steps against those who caused you harm. To correctly advise you on the merits of your elbow injury claim, your friendly Free Legal Justice claims handler will need as much information as possible about the accident. We ask that you have as much information as possible ready for your free consultation with one of our injury claims experts, including details such as:

• How the accident happened, and nature of the injuries suffered or damage caused as a result of the accident;
• Details of where the accident happened;
• If there was a car involved in the accident, both license registration details;
• The names and contact numbers of the individuals involved in the accident; and
• Any police reference numbers or emergency service attendance details.

As a standard part of the personal injury claims process, you will need to see a doctor for an independent medical examination. The medical officer will conduct a full assessment and write a report based on the injuries that you have suffered because of the accident. This independent medical report will be used in support of your injury claim and will help us to value the amount of compensation that you are rightly entitled to.

Once a solicitor from Free Legal Justice has started your elbow injury claim, we will also ask you to share any possible evidence that you may have gathered from the scene of the accident with us. This evidence will support your injury claim, and may include:

• Details of any witnesses at the accident scene;
• Photographs of the accident scene;
• Photographs of any injuries;
• Details of medical appointments that you have attended;
• Details and receipts of any medication that a doctor has prescribed to treat your injuries.

In addition to this, it is important that you keep a record of all other medical reports, documentation and receipts which could be used in support of your elbow injury claim. Don’t worry if you don’t have all of this information right now. With a single call to Free Legal Justice, our injury claims team will be able explain the merits of your injury claim based on the information that you can provide. Get in touch with a Free Legal Justice claims handler as soon as possible- the earlier we have the details of your compensation claim, the quicker one of our injury claims solicitors can get started on your case, and help you get the justice that you deserve.

If you have any questions about your elbow injury claim, the Free Legal Justice team is available to chat about the merits and value of your claim, in a confidential, free discussion from the comfort of your own home. If you are unable to call us, simply fill in the online form and a team member will call you back for free, or request a complimentary home visit from one of our claims experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Will My Accident Claim Take?

Every accident is unique, and so too is the claim process. Certain cases settle in a matter of months, while others are more complicated and will take longer to resolve. The duration of a case will depend on the facts specific to the claim, as well as the actions taken by both parties to progress the matter. Our experienced solicitors have handled many personal injury matters in their legal careers, and will be able to give you good idea of how long your elbow injury claim is likely to take once they have assessed your claim.

No matter what caused the accident or who you think is to blame for the accident, it is important that you speak to a legal professional from Free Legal Justice as soon as possible to determine whether you have a valid claim. Our experienced team handles every personal injury claim through a fast-track assessment and allocation process; so that we can help our clients get the compensation they deserve as soon as possible.

Our team of accident claims solicitors will advise you on the expected duration of your case once they have carefully discussed the details of your accident claim with you. The sooner you give us the details of your accident, the sooner one of accident claims solicitors can get started on your claim and get you the justice that you deserve. Contact Free Legal Justice for a free, no-obligation consultation.

Are There Time Rules For Making An Elbow Injury Claim?

Generally, you need to make an injury claim within three years of the date of the accident, or of the date that you became aware of your injuries. There are exceptions on this prescription period, for example you may be allowed a longer time period if you are claiming on behalf of a child or protected person. Similarly, if you were injured in a car accident that was the result of criminal activity such as a hit and run, time limits may vary if the claim is instituted through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

Can I Make An Injury Claim For Someone Else?

Yes. In certain circumstances, for example if an injured person is either too young or vulnerable, too injured or otherwise unable to claim on their own behalf, a parent, guardian or appointed person can handle the claim process on behalf of the injured person.

Will I Have To Go To Court?

It is not likely that you will need to go to court for your elbow injury claim. The vast majority of claims are settled outside of court. Generally, a personal injury claim will only go to Court if the case is extremely complex and where