Injuries can be significantly damaging to both your physical and mental wellbeing. An injury to your body can be physically very painful, preventing you from doing certain things until you have recovered. In turn, this plays on your mental health as the injury may leave you in a physical state that can never reach the same level that you once were.
There are lots of things to worry about when you suffer an injury, but the financial side of injuries is also very important. An injury can be extremely expensive, particularly when you take into account the medical bills and any other ways you lose money. This creates the question, do you have the right to compensation after suffering an injury?
In short form, yes and no. There are certain criteria that must be met to qualify you for compensation after being injured:
Who caused the injury?
Or, to put this another way, how did the injury happen?
Was this a freak incident where you were running along the sidewalk and you just tripped over and shattered your kneecap? Were you playing sports and you pulled a muscle, resulting in a long-term injury? Did you get involved in a car accident, but it was caused by your own reckless driving?
In all of these scenarios, you’re not really entitled to compensation as nobody caused your injuries. They were all either fluke accidents or were partially caused by your own doing. In fact, in the last instance, the chances are anyone else involved in that accident can get compensation from you if they are injured!
Effectively, you can claim compensation if you have been injured due to the acts of someone else. This goes under tort law, which lets injured people file lawsuits seeking compensation if a person, business, or government entity were the ones to cause them harm. For example, you are in a shop and you slip on a wet floor. This is the business’s fault as they should’ve cleaned up the spillage or left a sign warning you. Or, the flip side of the example earlier; you get hurt in a car accident because of someone else’s poor driving.
How costly is the injury?
Following on from above, how much will the injury cost you? This refers to medical bills, loss of income due to your injury putting you out of work, the cost of installing new things in your home to cope with the injury, and so on.
Basically, if the injury costs you any money at all – and it was caused by someone else – you are definitely entitled to compensation. It is important to seek this out as injuries can play a huge role in your financial health. Especially if you are unable to work because of the injury, meaning you lose out on wages and could possibly lose your job as well.
Realistically, the only time you cannot get compensation for an injury is when it was a fluke accident or caused by your own behaviors.
