Personal Injury
Child Injury Claims

The compensation claim is commenced in the same way as any compensation claim for an adult, namely by completing and submitting a completed personal injury claim form with the CTP/green slip insurer of the vehicle involved in the accident.

This all depends on where the accident happened, whether it was in the day or night and whether the driver of the car which hit your child had any opportunity to avoid the accident. In the vast majority of cases some responsibility will be sheeted home to the driver of the car for driving too quickly, failing to keep a proper lookout, failing to sound a warning to the child. Prudent drivers must always be on the lookout for children who can often act irresponsibly when it comes to road safety. If your child is under the age of 6 at the time of the accident he or she cannot be found guilty of any contributory negligence. That’s because a child of that age is simply too young to be responsible for his or her actions. Children above the age of 6 or 7 can be found guilty of contributory negligence if they were partly to blame for the accident. In the vast majority of the cases which we have handled over many years we have succeeded in negotiating very significant settlements for injured children, even though they were partially responsible for their own injuries.

It is rare that a child struck by a car, motorcycle or some other motor vehicle escapes such a trauma without serious injuries. In our experience the most common injuries suffered by children hit by cars and other motor vehicles are spinal cord injuries or traumatic brain injuries. They are unbearably tragic, not only for the child but for the child’s family.

That really depends on the severity of the injuries, the age of your child and when it would be prudent to finalise the claim which will take into account the long-term consequences of the injuries over the child’s life. In most cases involving children it is prudent to wait until the child reaches adulthood before completing the case. In any event children are unable to receive any compensation until they turn 18 and any settlement proposed before the age of 18 must receive the approval of a judge in the District or Supreme Court. Therefore, in accidents involving very young children, even babies or infants, it can sometimes take decades before a claim can be satisfactorily finalised.

In our experience most compensation claims for children injured in motor vehicle accidents and in other types of accidents are settled without having to go through a court hearing. This is possibly because insurers are very conscious of the sympathy a seriously injured child may receive from a judge in the Supreme or District Court.

The biggest differences are that it takes much longer to finalise compensation claims for children because they are unable to obtain any compensation until they turn 18, the long-term effects of injuries are quite often not known until a child has reached adulthood, a child injuries may take many years to stabilise, particular injuries involving growth plates and brain damage. They are also different because there is no “track record” for the child in relation to work and other activities before the accident, unlike claims for adults who generally have a work record to inform us as to what the injured person’s most likely future circumstances would have been, in relation to employment etc, had they not been injured.