Bodily injuries are the hallmarks of most personal injury claims. However, the severity of wounds varies from person to person. An injury can be minor or severe, and the latter often have life-long implications.

When you sustain severe injuries, the compensation differs from when you only suffer minor wounds. This article answers the question: what is a major personal injury? We also discuss accidents where you can sustain these wounds and the average compensation.
Contact us at Claims Bible to calculate how much you can get as compensation for a personal injury.

What Is a Major Personal Injury?

A wound qualifies as a major personal injury if it results in a disability, permanently diminishes one’s quality of life, or causes death. Severe or catastrophic injuries fall under this category.

Below, we discuss the different types of wounds you can file a major personal injury case for.

Birth Injury

Birth injury refers to damage from excessive physical pressure during the birthing process. It happens during transit from the birth canal. Newborn babies often experience this type of injury.

Minor birth wounds heal without treatment, but more severe ones require medical intervention. Examples are nerve injuries, brain bleeding, perinatal asphyxia, subconjunctival hemorrhage, caput succedaneum, etc.

Amputation

Amputation is the loss or removal of a body part like the toe, finger, hand, foot, arm, or leg. Most traumatic amputations result from motor vehicle accidents or industrial accidents. Traumatic injury accounts for 45% of all amputations .

A forceful accident impact may result in the cutting off of a body part, or a piece of machinery may crush it. Also, tissue destruction, infection, or disease affecting a particular body part that makes it impossible to treat or threaten a person’s life may result in an amputation.

This injury is life-altering as it affects your ability to move, work, interact with others, and live independently. Also, you may experience continuing pain, phantom limb phenomena, and emotional trauma, making it hard to recover.

Spinal Cord Injury

A spinal cord injury (SCI) refers to damage to any part of the spinal cord or nerves at the base of the spinal canal. This wound is quite severe, and it causes permanent changes in strength, body sensation, and other body functions below the injury site.

Spinal cord injury changes your life, affecting you mentally, socially, and emotionally. In addition, some SCI would lead to partial paralysis or complete paralysis with no use of body parts below the injury site. The risk of spinal cord injuries is why accident victims should get medical attention immediately after the occurrence.

Loss of Hearing and Sight

Generally, a person’s hearing and sight decline as they age. However, a sudden traumatic event can result in loss of vision, hearing, or both. For instance, a car accident results in a traumatic brain injury that affects the optic nerve or breaks the bone around the eyes.
As a result, the vehicle occupant may suffer a loss of sight. Similarly, shattered glass from a broken windshield can cut the cornea or eyelids. A person who slips and falls may also suffer a skull fracture or a perforated eardrum.

Another scenario is exposure to loud noise and harmful chemicals at work. Finally, loss of hearing or sight may be temporary or permanent.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

A traumatic brain injury is one of the most common sources of major personal injury cases. TBI results from a violent blow to the head. This could be from a shattered skull or a bullet.
A TBI can be mild, moderate, or severe. The latter often causes bruising, torn tissues, bleeding, and other physical damage to the brain. A traumatic brain injury can result in life-long complications or death.

Nerve Damage

Occurrences like road accidents can cause nerve damage. This often results from compression, inflammation, and internal injuries. For example, you will likely experience nerve injury if you suffer whiplash, herniated disc, and a pinched nerve.

Most people do not know when they have a nerve injury because there are no physical signs like you’d see with a broken bone. However, watch out for symptoms like numbness, radiating pain, muscle weakness, tingling, or prickling.

Other severe wounds that give rise to a major personal injury claim include eye injury, facial wounds, paralysis, neurological damage, crush injury, etc. Thankfully, you can claim compensation for each of these wounds, and at Claims Bible, we can help you calculate the amount.

What Causes Severe Bodily Injuries?

There are several causes of severe/catastrophic bodily injuries. They include:

• Sports accidents
• Car accidents
• Workplace accidents
• Truck accident
• Motorcycle collisions
• Bicycle crashes
• Pedestrian accidents
• Boating accidents
• Fires and explosions
• Public place accidents
• Slip and fall accidents
• Falling from horseback
• Violent crime, etc.

When filing a claim for an injury resulting from any of the above, you must prove that another person’s negligence caused your injuries. In addition, you must show that the negligent party owed you a duty of care, breached the duty, the breach caused your wound, and you suffered damages.

Note that you must have suffered losses to file a valid claim. If you did not lose anything, there would be no compensation. This goes with the legal maxim that there must be wrong for a remedy to apply.

What Compensation Can You Get for a Major Personal Injury?

Personal injury compensation aims to return you to the state you were before the accident. With that in mind, there are two major types of damages you can get from the at-fault party. They are known as special and general damages.

Special Damages

Special or economic damages cover the financial losses caused by the accident. It applies to losses that have a fixed dollar amount making them quantifiable. Special damages are particularly essential in significant personal injury cases due to the nature of the wounds.

These injuries often require a lengthy hospital stay, medical equipment, house modifications, and future medical care. All these translate to thousands of pounds, and you may be unable to cover everything yourself. Even if you have health insurance, it might not be enough.

Also, your injury may keep you away from work temporarily or permanently. If you suffer a disability and can’t return to your previous employment, you might change occupations. Therefore, a judge or insurance company would consider all these when awarding compensation.

So, expect your settlement to include:

• Past, current, and future medical bills
• Costs of medical equipment
• Lost wages
• Loss of earning capacity
• Therapy and vocational rehabilitation

If you suffered any property damage during the accident, your compensation would also cover it. In addition, when the victim dies, their relatives can request burial and funeral expenses. Our personal injury calculator considers all these when calculating your settlement.

General Damages

General or non-economic damages do not compensate you for financial losses. Rather, they consider the physical and psychological injuries caused by the occurrence. When dealing with catastrophic injuries, the pain is more than when you have a minor wound.

Also, you may feel depressed and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health challenges when faced with the reality of your new situation. The preceding is common when dealing with a wound that results in disability.

Furthermore, general damages cover the life experiences you will miss because of the wound. For example, if you enjoyed football or hiking and can no longer enjoy it because of an injury, you will receive compensation.

So, expect the settlement to factor in the following:

• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Mental anguish
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Diminished life quality
• Loss of consortium, etc.

What Is a Major Personal Injury Average Compensation?

The settlement received for a major personal injury case varies from one case to the next.

Generally, it depends on:

• The type of injury
• The treatment prescribed and the duration
• The need for surgical intervention, and
• The degree of pain and suffering.

Below, we look at different wounds and the possible settlement amount:

• Birth Injury: The amount ranges from £150,000 to £12 million.
• Amputation: The settlement ranges from £36,520 to £300,000 and depends mainly on the affected body part.
• Spinal Cord Injury: The compensation varies from £240,000 to £380,000, depending on the nature of the disability.
• Traumatic Brain Injury: The settlement ranges from £250,000 to £350,000.
• Loss of Hearing and Sight: The compensation varies from £217,000 to £326,000 for total blindness and deafness.
• Nerve Damage: The settlement ranges from £91,090 to £160,980, especially when dealing with severe nerve root damage.
• Paralysis: The amount varies from £205,000 to £380,000, depending on the nature and extent of the paralysis.

How Claims Bible Can Help

Getting the maximum compensation for a major personal injury case is essential, and we understand this at Claims Bible. 

Read more about Personal Injury claims on our Personal Injury page or read more articles about Personal Injury claims.

Ready to submit your claim? Use the enquiry form on this page.