Care Home Injury Claims

To successfully claim for injuries sustained in a care home or nursing home, it must be shown that the home or its employees were negligent in their care towards your loved one.

To establish negligence, it must be proved that:

• your loved one was owed a duty of care by the care home
• the care home failed in this duty, or their standards fell short of those required
• your loved one suffered an injury as a direct consequence of this

A care home automatically owes a duty of care to all of its residents. It is also responsible for the actions of the staff it employs. As such, establishing that a duty of care exists is very unlikely to be a problem.

Proving the other two steps is often more significant to a claim’s success. However, Truth Legal has years of experience in making successful personal injury claims. We will tenaciously fight your cause to achieve a fair result. We are based in Harrogate but have a presence in York, London and Manchester. No matter where you might be, we pride ourselves on giving all of our clients an exceptional service, provided by personal injury solicitors, not paralegals in a call centre.

In general: no. An adult who has suffered a personal injury usually has to bring a claim for themselves and in their own name.

However, there are situations in which you can make a claim on a loved one’s behalf:

• If they lack the ‘mental capacity’ required. In the legal sense of the phrase, this means if your loved one can’t take in information, process and consider it, and then you can may be able to make a decision on their behalf.
• If your loved one has sadly passed away. If you have been appointed as their personal representative you can bring a claim on behalf of their estate.
• If you have been granted a Power of Attorney by your loved one. A Power of Attorney gives you legal authority to act on someone’s behalf. However, the extent of what you can and can’t do for them depends upon the contents of the Power itself.

When a loved one in a care home has suffered an injury they might not want the ‘hassle’ of bringing a claim, or may want to avoid ‘making a fuss’. This is perfectly understandable.

However, Truth Legal has helped many people through the claims process. Our expertise and experience ensures that we can conduct your claim as quickly and painlessly as possible. We passionately believe in the good that personal injury claims can do: making the negligent party pay for their mistakes, ensuring that they don’t treat other people in the same way, and as result taking the burden off the State.

The fact is: if sub-standard care or other mistreatment has caused your loved one an injury, they deserve to be compensated. Shouldn’t those who have caused the pain and suffering be held to account for what they have done? Shouldn’t they be given a strong incentive to ensure that this should not be allowed to happen to anyone else?

As with all claims, a time limit applies.

In general, your loved one must begin their claim within 3 years of the date of the accident in question.

A number of rules may change the time limits which apply to your case. If your loved one is thinking of bringing a personal injury claim, or you are worried matters have been left for too long, contact us as soon as possible so that we can advise you on where you stand.

If your loved one’s injury was not their fault, we are often able to conduct matters on the basis of a ‘No Win, No Fee’ agreement.

This means, in the vast majority of situations, that your loved one will not have to pay our fees if we are unsuccessful in recovering compensation for them. On the other hand, if we are successful, our fees will be paid by a portion of your loved one’s compensation award and also by the care home’s insurers.

If you have any concerns on how a claim is funded, we are more than willing to discuss matters with you in more depth. Please feel free to contact us.