Simon* was hit by a car when he was crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing and sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. The driver of the car didn’t have insurance or a driving licence, so we pursued a case through the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) – an independent body set up to pay compensation where there’s no other route to make a claim and is funded from insurance premiums. Despite arguments from the MIB about who was to the blame for the incident, we secured regular payments from them to fund care and support for Simon while his case was still ongoing.
The challenges faced by Simon
Simon is originally from overseas and was only in the UK for Christmas, visiting his partner’s family. His family were keen to get him home so that he could start his treatment and rehabilitation closer to them.
- Due to his brain injury, Simon had lots of ongoing care and support needs.
- The MIB wouldn’t accept blame for the collision and argued about whether they would pay for the ongoing care.
How we helped with these challenges
We immediately realised how important it was for Simon to be closer to his family, so within one month of being instructed we’d secured an interim payment (payments received from the defendants during a case before any settlement has been agreed) to safely fly Simon home.
- Once Simon was home, we made sure that he had access to specialist treatment at a neurorehabilitation unit and spoke with a case manager in his area to work out what the best treatment options were moving forward.
- As the MIB wouldn’t agree to fund more support, we made a payment application to the Court to make sure we could access funding for the ongoing care Simon needed.
The results and outcome
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We were successful in our application to the Court and managed to get more funding to help support Simon and his family before we’d settled his case.
- This ongoing funding helped to pay for a fully adapted property so that Simon could go home to his family in a safe environment with full time carers.
- We worked with care experts and the rehabilitation team in Simon’s home country to make sure he had access to all the support he needed, both through their own provisions and through funding from these interim payments.
*not his real name
