Finger Injury Compensation Claims
Crush injuries, fractures, tendon
damage and amputation
Finger injuries get underestimated by almost everyone except the person who has one. They are easy to describe as minor and hard to live with, and how much a claim is worth depends on things most people would not expect. We handle finger injury claims on a No Win No Fee basis and will explain honestly where you stand.
Regulated solicitors
Years' experience
No Win No Fee
Why a finger injury calculator cannot answer your question
Most people land on a page like this having already tried a calculator somewhere. The reason those tools feel unsatisfying is not that they are hiding something. It is that they ask you which body part was injured, and on a finger that is the least useful question available.
Which finger
Fingers are not interchangeable. An index finger and a thumb do a disproportionate share of the work of a hand, and losing part of either affects grip and pinch in a way that losing a little finger generally does not. The published guidance the courts work from treats them as separate injuries with separate ranges. A calculator that asks only “finger” has already lost the most important fact.
Which hand
The same injury to a dominant hand and a non-dominant hand does not have the same effect on a life, and the assessment reflects that. If you are right-handed and the injury is to your right index finger, that is a materially different claim from the identical injury on the left. It is one of the first things a medical expert records and one of the last things a web tool asks.
What you do
This is usually the biggest one, and it sits outside the injury bracket altogether. A stiff finger is an inconvenience for some people and the end of a trade for others. A joiner, a musician, a hairdresser, a dental nurse and an office worker with the same fracture are in five different positions, and the difference shows up in lost earnings rather than in the injury itself.
So what can you actually find out? The courts assess injuries against published brackets set out in the Judicial College Guidelines, which do distinguish between thumb, index finger, little finger, amputation and stiffness. Those brackets are public, and a solicitor can tell you which one your injury is likely to fall into once a medical report exists. What nobody can honestly tell you at the enquiry stage is where in a range you sit, or what your lost earnings come to. That is not evasiveness. It is the difference between a figure and a guess.
Can you make a finger injury claim?
Three things have to be established, and they are the same three for any injury claim. Somebody owed you a duty of care, they fell short of it, and that is what caused the injury.
At work
Most finger claims are workplace claims, and most workplace finger claims come down to machinery. An employer is expected to make sure equipment is safe and properly maintained, that dangerous parts are guarded, that the task has been assessed, and that you were trained and supplied with the right protection for it.
Whether any of that happened is usually the whole of the liability argument. See accident at work claims and factory injury claims.
Everywhere else
Doors in shops and public buildings, faulty equipment, road collisions where a hand takes the impact, and sports injuries where the rules or the supervision fell short. The duty is owed by whoever was responsible for the place or the product.
A note on time limits, because the guidance on this is often wrong. The usual limit is three years from the injury, or from when you first knew it was connected to someone else’s failure. For a child, the three years runs from their eighteenth birthday. Where an injured person lacks the mental capacity to conduct a claim, judged against the test in the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the period does not run while that is the case. Having a mental health condition is not the same as lacking capacity.
Two routes work differently. An application to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority must normally be made within two years. And a claim about a defective product has two deadlines: the ordinary three years from the injury or from your date of knowledge, and a separate ten year backstop running from when the product was first supplied, after which the right to claim is extinguished altogether. The ten years is an outer limit, not a claim window. If you have read otherwise, check before relying on it.
Common finger injuries and how they arise
Fingers have very little protecting them and they are usually the first thing to reach whatever went wrong.
The injuries
- Crush injuries. Machinery, doors, and loads that shifted. Often worse than they look on the day, because the damage is to soft tissue and nail bed as well as bone.
- Fractures. Frequently treated as minor and frequently left with stiffness, reduced grip or a finger that no longer straightens.
- Tendon and ligament damage. A cut tendon can mean surgery and months of splinting, and the recovery is rarely complete.
- Amputation, full or partial. Including fingertip and nail bed loss, which is more disabling than most people expect.
- Nerve damage. Numbness, hypersensitivity or pain that outlasts the healing.
Where they happen
- Unguarded or badly maintained machinery. The single largest source of serious finger injuries at work.
- Doors. Heavy or badly fitted doors in shops, workplaces and public buildings, including doors that should have had a finger guard and did not.
- Hand tools and equipment that failed. Which may be a claim against an employer, a supplier or a manufacturer.
- Road collisions. Hands take the impact, on a steering wheel or on the road. See road traffic accident claims.
- Organised sport. Where supervision, equipment or the rules fell short of what was reasonable.
How much compensation for a finger injury?
A claim comes in two parts, and on a finger injury it is usually the second part that decides whether the claim is small or substantial.
General damages
For the injury itself and its effect on your life. This is assessed against published brackets in the Judicial College Guidelines, which set out separate ranges for the thumb, the index finger, the little finger, amputation, and lasting stiffness or loss of grip. Which bracket applies depends on the medical evidence, not on how the injury felt at the time.
Where the injury came from a violent crime, a different system applies: the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme pays against its own published tariff rather than an individual assessment. See criminal injury claims.
Special damages
For what the injury has cost you, and this is where finger claims vary most:
- Earnings lost while you were off, and any ongoing loss if you cannot do the same work
- Having to change trade, which on a manual job is the largest figure in most of these claims
- Physiotherapy, hand therapy, and any private treatment
- Travel to appointments, and help at home during recovery
- Equipment or adaptations, including for driving
Evidence that supports a finger injury claim
Two things have to be shown: that somebody was responsible, and that the injury is more than it looks. Finger claims are more often undervalued than refused, so the second half matters as much as the first.
Carried on working through it? Very common with hand injuries, and it does not defeat the claim. It can make it harder to show how much you were affected, which is why the specialist evidence matters. Tell us what you actually did rather than what you think sounds better.
No Win No Fee finger injury claims
A No Win No Fee agreement, properly called a Conditional Fee Agreement, means there is nothing to pay upfront. If the claim does not succeed, you do not pay us for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you in advance comes out of your compensation. There is a legal cap on that fee in personal injury claims, and it is worth understanding properly: the cap is calculated on your damages for the injury itself and your past financial losses, not on the whole settlement, because future losses are left out of the calculation. Your agreement will set out the exact percentage in writing before you sign.
Ask us to walk you through the figures, including what happens to disbursements and whether any insurance is taken out on your behalf, rather than taking a headline percentage on trust. That applies to any firm you speak to.
Finger injury claims: your questions answered
The questions we are asked most, answered plainly.
How much compensation can you get for a finger injury?
There is no single figure, and the honest answer is that it depends on three things a calculator will not ask you: which finger, whether it was your dominant hand, and what you do for a living. The injury itself is assessed against published brackets in the Judicial College Guidelines, which treat the thumb, the index finger and the little finger as separate injuries. On top of that sits whatever the injury has cost you in earnings, which on a manual job is usually the larger figure. A solicitor can tell you which bracket is likely to apply once there is a medical report.
Can I claim for a broken finger at work?
Often, yes, if the injury came from something your employer should have managed. The usual questions are whether the machinery was properly guarded and maintained, whether the task had been assessed, and whether you were trained and equipped for it. A broken finger is frequently treated as a minor injury by everyone except the person who has to grip things with it, so do not assume it is too small to be worth asking about, particularly if you have been left with stiffness or reduced grip.
Can I claim for a finger trapped in a door?
It depends on whose door it was and why it closed on you. In a shop, a workplace or a public building, the occupier is responsible for keeping the premises reasonably safe, and questions arise about heavy or badly fitted doors, doors with faulty closers, and doors where a finger guard should have been fitted and was not. Claims involving children are common. If this happened at home to a member of your own household, there is generally no claim, and it is better to know that now.
Is a finger injury too minor to be worth claiming for?
That is the most common reason people do not ring, and it is often wrong. What decides the value is not how dramatic the injury looked but what it left behind: whether the grip came back, whether the finger straightens, whether the numbness settled, and whether you can still do your job. A fingertip amputation in a trade that needs fine handling can be a substantial claim. A clean fracture that healed fully in an office worker may not be worth pursuing, and we would tell you that rather than take it on.
How long do I have to make a finger injury claim?
Usually three years from the injury, or from when you first realised it was connected to someone else’s failure. For a child, the three years runs from their eighteenth birthday. Where an injured person lacks the mental capacity to conduct a claim, judged against the Mental Capacity Act 2005 test, the period does not run while that remains the case, though having a mental health condition is not the same as lacking capacity. Two routes differ: an application to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority must normally be made within two years, and a defective product claim has both a three year period and a separate ten year backstop running from when the product was first supplied.
Can I claim through CICA if my finger was injured in an assault?
You may be able to. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority pays awards to blameless victims of violent crime against a published tariff. Eligibility does not depend on the offender having money, and it does not require them to have been caught or convicted. What it does require is that the incident was reported to the police as soon as reasonably practicable and that you cooperate with the investigation, and awards can be reduced or refused for unspent convictions or for failing to cooperate. The deadline is normally two years rather than three.
Find out where you stand
Tell us which finger, which hand, how it happened, and what you do for a living. Those four things are enough for us to give you a realistic view, including which published bracket your injury is likely to fall into. If we do not think a claim is worth bringing, we will say so.
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- SRA-regulated solicitors
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Most people who ring us about a finger have spent months telling themselves it was not serious enough to bother anyone with. Some of them are right. A good number are not, particularly where the grip never fully came back. Ten minutes on the phone settles it either way, and it commits you to nothing.
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