Spinal Injury Compensation Claims

While fractures of all types can be incredibly painful, complex fractures often cause particularly severe issues. Where a fracture involves a bone breaking into multiple pieces, extends into a joint, or causes an open fracture injury, it can significantly impact a person’s quality of life for a long time, sometimes permanently.

What is a complex fracture?

We refer to broken bones as complex fractures when the injury is more serious than a straightforward, clean bone break, i.e. a ‘simple fracture’. So, while a clean break usually refers to a bone broken in one place, ‘complex fractures’ involve:

• Bones broken, smashed or splintered into many pieces (comminuted)
• Open fractures, where the broken bone breaks through the skin (compound fractures)
• A number of bones broken arising out of the same incident (multiple).
• Broken bones that move out of position.
• Breaks that extend into the joints.
• A fracture that also impacts upon nearby tissue, such as muscles, ligaments, tendons, or skin.

How are complex fractures treated?

1. Clean break fractures can often be treated without surgery; the bone is held in place with a splint or cast until it heals. On the other hand, complex fractures usually require more extensive medical treatment.
2. The treatment for complex fractures involves specialist trauma care delivered by a team of medical professionals, including surgeons, specialist nurses, physiotherapists, and pain management consultants.
3. Treatment usually starts with an urgent assessment in A&E, where the doctors will take X-rays, administer strong pain relief, and stabilise the damaged bone.
4. If the fracture is accompanied by lacerations to the limb, the medical team’s other main priority will be to prevent infection and save the wounded limb.
5. Surgery is usually the only option for hip fractures and fractures that sit on nerves. During the operation, surgeons will insert pins, screws, and metal plates to hold the bones in place while they are healing.
6. Following initial treatment, the patient will need to undergo extensive rehabilitation, often lasting weeks or even months. Rehabilitation increases strength in the affected limb and gradually restores its functionality. However, not everyone makes a full recovery, and mobility may remain limited for a lengthy period or even permanently.
7. Rehabilitation will usually be staged, guided by the medical professionals in conjunction with the patient.
8. Early treatment may focus on managing the patient’s pain and increasing their mobility safely, followed by more intensive exercises to help them regain their full range of mobility.

How do complex fractures occur?

Complex fractures are most commonly associated with high-impact trauma, such as:

Falls from height

Falling from height is a frequent cause of serious broken bone claims due to the sheer force with which the body hits the ground. The impact can cause bones to shatter, particularly in the lower limbs and pelvis.

Road traffic accidents

The impact of a road traffic accident often causes complex fractures, even at moderate speeds. Serious collisions can cause the bone to pierce the skin and open fractures, and incidents involving crushing can result in even more extensive fractures.  Car accidents, motorcycle accidents, cycling accidents and pedestrian accidents are the cause of many of the complex fracture accident claims we deal with at Mooneerams Solicitors.

Falling object accidents

Falling objects cause complex fractures because the impact delivers significant force to a small area, e.g., heavy tins or boxes falling from the highest shelves in a warehouse or supermarket. The bones in the impacted area are susceptible to fracturing, and the force of the impact can split the skin.

When does a complex fracture give rise to a serious injury claim?

There is no fixed legal definition of a serious injury claim. In practice, the term is used to describe a situation in which someone has suffered a life-changing or catastrophic injury due to another person’s negligence. ‘Serious injury’ is the simplest way of describing the severity of the injury.

1. Was your accident caused by someone else’s negligence?

An accident is caused by someone else’s negligence when they owe you a duty of care, breach that duty, and injures you as a result.

Examples of accidents that may be due to someone else’s negligence include:

• Falling from height at work because your employer provided faulty mobile warehouse steps.
• Getting injured in a road traffic accident because another driver failed to give way when you had priority.
• Suffering a crushing injury at work due to a fault with a forklift truck that led to braking failure and pinned you against a wall.

2. Are your injuries serious?

All types of fractured or broken bones are serious so far as the person suffering from them is concerned.

However, complex fractures are more likely to be deemed ‘serious’ for the purposes of a personal injury claim where they cause lasting mobility problems and pain, and affect the person’s ability to work, participate in leisure activities, and live independently.

The more a complex fracture alters your quality of life, the more likely your claim is to be treated as a serious injury claim.

Serious injuries justify higher compensation awards. The severity of your injury has a direct impact on the amount of damages you will get for your:

• pain,
• suffering, and
• loss of amenity (a reduction in the accident victim’s quality of life, their enjoyment of leisure activities, and the inability to carry out normal daily tasks)

A serious complex fracture can cause significant financial losses for the injured person and their family. They may need to take an extended period of time off work to recover in the long term. In the worst case, they might never be fit enough to return to their previous job role. In these cases, the loss of earnings claim may be significant.

In most complex fracture cases, there may be a need to fund ongoing care, home adaptations, or specialist equipment, to accommodate the injured party’s new needs, the cost of which will be calculated and added to the overall value of the compensation claim.

When Mooneerams deal with such claims, we obtain expert evidence from a range of specialists, such as:

• medical health professionals,
• forensic accountants, and
• care experts.

These expert reports will build up a bank of evidence to prove the extent of the complex fracture claim being brought.

It’s important to ensure that every aspect of the injured person’s injuries and their effects on the person’s quality of life has been covered and verified by the experts. In that way, the complex injury claim will cover every area of damages it is possible to claim for and ensure the claimant’s compensation claim settles for the maximum amount to which they are entitled.

Why choose Mooneerams for your complex fracture claim?

At Mooneerams, our personal injury solicitors specialise in personal injury claims. We only act for claimants, and we are committed to ensuring that every one of our clients is compensated appropriately for the suffering they have suffered due to someone else’s negligence.

We act on a No Win, No Fee basis for almost all our clients. No Win No Fee agreements take away the worry of paying expensive legal costs for clients, so they can concentrate on their recovery whilst we pursue the claim on their behalf.

Our job extends beyond securing the maximum compensation possible. We also have an important role to play in making sure our clients receive the treatment and rehabilitation they need early on.

Early medical intervention can significantly improve a patient’s prognosis, so we work with medical professionals to identify the help the client needs. We then seek to fund this by arranging for the insurers of the party that caused the accident to cover the costs.

A complex fracture injury claim takes time to bring to a conclusion by settlement, or less frequently, by going to court, and the ongoing consequences are extremely upsetting for clients and their families.

Mooneerams Solicitors provides support at every stage of the claims process, from the clients’ initial meeting with us through to the conclusion of their case and beyond. We are always at the end of the phone on 029 2199 1927.