Pelvis Injury Compensation Claims
Broken and fractured pelvis, and what comes after
A pelvic fracture takes a long time to recover from, and some of what it leaves behind is the kind of thing people do not mention to anybody. Those parts belong in the claim as much as the walking does. We handle pelvis injury claims on a No Win No Fee basis, and you can talk to us in confidence.
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The after-effects pelvis injury compensation often misses
The pelvis does not only carry your weight. It sits around the bladder, the bowel and the reproductive organs, and a fracture serious enough to need surgery can affect any of them. These are the consequences people tend not to raise with anyone, including their solicitor, and a claim that never asks about them will never include them.
What can be affected
- Bladder and urinary function.
Bladder and urinary function. - Bowel function.
Including where nerve damage is involved. - Sexual function.
Physical difficulty, pain, or loss of sensation, and the effect that has on a relationship.
- Childbirth.
For some women a previous pelvic fracture affects how a future birth is managed, and that is something a claim can take account of. - Nerve pain and altered sensation.
in the hips, groin or legs, which often outlasts the bone healing.
How common is this actually?
More common than the silence around it suggests. An NHS research summary describing a five-year follow-up study of patients treated for pelvic fracture records new urological dysfunction in 41% of them and sexual dysfunction in 43% at five years, and states plainly that “sexual and urological outcomes are important features of pelvic injury”.
That is a specific group of patients rather than everyone who injures a pelvis, and it is not a national figure. It is still a long way from rare, and it is a long way from being reflected in how these claims are usually run.
Source: NHS Health Research Authority, research summary on long-term functional and urological outcome after pelvic fractures.
You do not have to raise this on a first phone call. Nobody expects you to discuss it with a stranger, and you will not be asked to. What matters is that it gets asked at the right point, by the right person, and that if the answer is yes it forms part of the medical evidence rather than being left out because it never came up.
If you would rather these questions came from a woman, or a man, say so and it will be arranged. That is a normal request and it does not slow anything down.
What a pelvis injury claim can cover
There are two halves to it. What the injury has done to you, and what it has cost you and will go on costing you. On a pelvic injury, several of the largest items in the second half only appear in the claim if somebody thinks to ask about them.
The injury and its effects
Assessed against published guidance once independent medical experts have reported. A stable fracture that heals is a different case from an unstable one that needed surgery, and both are different again from a pelvis that has left permanent bladder, bowel or sexual difficulty behind it.
Where there is continuing organ or nerve involvement, more than one expert is usually needed. An orthopaedic surgeon can report on the bone. They are not the right person to report on urological function, obstetric risk or the psychological effect of either.
Scarring from surgery, and any anxiety or depression that has followed, are assessed alongside the physical injury rather than instead of it.
What it has cost, and will cost
- Earnings lost, and future earnings where you cannot go back to the same work or the same hours
- Care and help at home, including help given unpaid by family during the months you could not weight bear
- Adaptations and equipment , from a temporary downstairs bed to permanent changes to a bathroom
- Treatment and rehabilitation, including physiotherapy and any continence or pelvic health input
- Future surgery , where a hip replacement or a revision is expected years ahead
- Fertility investigation or treatment, where that has become necessary
- Travel to appointments, and the cost of getting about while you could not drive
Why there is no figure on this page. A pelvic injury covers everything from a crack that heals in eight weeks to a ring fracture with permanent nerve damage, so any single range quoted before the experts have reported is describing a spread rather than your case. There is a more useful question to put to any solicitor at the start, and it is not what the claim is worth. It is which experts they intend to instruct, because that decision, made in the first few weeks, sets the ceiling on everything that follows.
Common causes of farm accidents
Farming is the most dangerous industry in Britain by fatal injury rate, and the reasons are fairly consistent year to year.
General damages
For the injury itself and what it has taken from your life. Assessed against published brackets once an independent medical expert has examined you and given a prognosis.
Farm injuries are often severe, and severity is not the same as prognosis. What matters most is what you are left with a year or two later.
Financial losses
This is where farm claims differ from most workplace claims, because the work and the livelihood are frequently the same thing:
- Lost earnings, and future earnings if you cannot go back to physical work
- The cost of paying someone to do work you can no longer do on the holding
- Loss of profits where the business itself was affected
- Treatment, physiotherapy, travel and help at home
- Adaptations to machinery, vehicles or the house
The one people forget. If you run the holding yourself, the cost of replacing your own labour is a real and recoverable loss, and it is frequently the largest single item in a farm claim. Keep a note of who you had to pay to do what, and for how long. It is far easier to prove now than to reconstruct at the end.
Can you make a pelvis 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.
Where the duty comes from
Usually from a statute that already applies to the situation. A driver owes a duty to other road users. An employer has to provide a safe place and safe system of work. An occupier has to take reasonable care that visitors are reasonably safe.
Which one applies depends on where you were and what you were doing, and it is not something you need to work out before you ring.
And the practical test And the practical test
This is where farm claims differ from most workplace claims, because the work and the livelihood are frequently the same thing:
If you contributed to what happened, that usually reduces a claim rather than defeating it, and it is far better raised by you at the start than by the other side later.
A note on time limits, because this is stated wrongly in a lot of places. The usual limit is three years from the accident, or from when you first knew the injury was connected to someone else’s failure. Where the injured person is a child, a parent can bring the claim as a litigation friend at any time before they turn eighteen, and if nobody does, the child then has three years of their own, running from their eighteenth birthday to their twenty-first. The eighteenth birthday is not a deadline. Where someone lacks the mental capacity to conduct a claim, the period does not run while that remains the case.
Evidence that supports a
pelvis injury claim
Two things have to be shown: that somebody else was responsible, and what you have been left with. The first half is the same as any accident claim. The second half is where pelvic injuries are routinely undervalued, because a medical record can only contain what somebody said out loud.
If you have already been offered a settlement. Where a pelvic injury has left continence, sexual or fertility difficulties and no expert has reported on them, an offer is being made without half the picture. It is worth taking advice before you accept, because a settled claim cannot be reopened when the effects turn out to be permanent.
No Win No Fee pelvis 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.
Farm accident claims
your questions answered
The questions we are asked most, answered plainly.
Can you claim compensation for a broken pelvis?
If the fracture happened because somebody else failed to take reasonable care, then yes. That covers a driver who hit you, an employer who did not provide a safe system of work, an occupier who left a hazard unmarked, and a manufacturer whose equipment failed. You do not need to know which legal duty applies before you ring, and it does not matter whether the fracture was stable or needed surgery. What matters is whether it could reasonably have been prevented.
How long does a broken pelvis take to heal?
It depends entirely on which part of the ring broke and whether the pelvis was stable. A stable fracture is often managed without surgery, with a period of restricted weight bearing and then a gradual return over some months. An unstable break usually means surgery with plates or screws, and a longer recovery. Your treating team is the right source for your own timescale. For a claim, the more useful question is not when the bone heals but what is still there a year later, because nerve pain, hip stiffness and the pelvic floor effects often outlast the fracture itself.
Can a pelvic fracture affect your bladder, bowel or sex life?
Yes, and this is the part people are least likely to bring up. The pelvis surrounds the bladder, the bowel, the reproductive organs and the nerves that serve all of them, so a fracture can leave problems with continence, with sensation, or with sex. A five year follow up study by a Bristol team, described by the NHS Health Research Authority, reported new urological dysfunction in 41 per cent and sexual dysfunction in 43 per cent of the patients followed. That is one group of patients rather than a national average, and it does not tell you what will happen to you. It does show that these effects are common enough that a claim should ask about them rather than wait to be told.
Can a pelvic injury affect pregnancy or childbirth?
It can, and it is worth raising early even if you are not currently planning a pregnancy. Depending on where the fracture was and how it healed, there can be questions about the shape of the pelvic outlet, about pain, and about how a birth would be managed. Fertility can also be affected where there was damage to the reproductive organs or the nerves. None of that is something to work out on your own. It is a question for an obstetric or urological expert instructed as part of the claim, and it will not be asked unless somebody knows to ask it.
How long do I have to make a pelvis injury claim?
Usually three years from the accident, or from when you first realised the injury was connected to somebody else’s failure. Where the injured person is a child, a parent or guardian can bring the claim on their behalf at any time before the child turns eighteen, and if nobody does, the child then has three years of their own running from their eighteenth birthday to their twenty-first. The eighteenth birthday is not a cut off, and pages that say it is are wrong. Where somebody does not have the mental capacity to conduct a claim, the clock does not run while that remains the case. Claims to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority have their own shorter deadline, normally two years.
Do I have to talk about the personal effects on the first call?
Find out where you stand
Tell us what happened and roughly when. You do not have to go into anything personal at this stage. We will give you an honest view of whether there is a claim worth investigating, and of what it would need to establish.
- Free, confidential and without obligation
- No Win No Fee available
- SRA-regulated solicitors
Check if you can make a claim
Takes less than 60 seconds
Other claims we handle
Find out whether you have a claim
A great many people who ring about a pelvic injury mention the fracture and the limp, and mention nothing else, because nobody has asked them. Ten minutes on the phone will tell you whether there is a claim here and what it would need to cover. The conversation is free and commits you to nothing.
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