Peter Kneale Solicitor

You will probably need to bring some form of identification as solicitors are required to check that you are who you say you are.  Good forms of identification are; Driving licence photocard, full or provisional Passport, any current and valid passport. Biometric residence permit (UK) Birth certificate Adoption certificate Proof of address may also be needed. You should try to have current (within the past three months) versions of one or two of these; Bank or building society statement Credit card statement Council tax statement You should also take with you any documents that you have relating to the accident such as accident reports, investigation reports, photographs of the scene of the accident etc. If you haven't got a hard copy of any of these, then having a digital version (Jpeg files of photographs are best) or being prepared to email them across would be good. Don't worry if you haven't got any documents relating to the accident; you r s...

What work will I have to do for it or does the solicitor do it all? Putting the claim in involves an initial meeting which will probably last less than an hour. Your solicitor will need to take details of what happened and what the effect has been on you, and also consider what evidence there is to show that it is someone else’s fault. After the initial meeting you will probably not be involved in spending a lot of time on the case, generally your solicitor will get on with things although he will come back to you for instructions on anything that comes in from the other side and on medical evidence etc. At this point you need to make sure that you go through everything thoroughly and understand it. If there are any problems your solicitor should be happy to meet and have a discussion with you to explain it is going on. In almost all personal injury cases you will have to go to see a medical expert appointment which will probably last for less than an hour. Good practice is to always i...

The three-year time limit in disease cases is an extremely complex area of law. There are whole books written about the subject. The three-year time limit in a disease case runs from the date that you first know or, according to recent court decisions, should have known or should have found out that you have a disease condition or an illness  caused by your work. Clearly that test would be met if you are told by a doctor at a hospital or someone in your Occupational Health Department at work that you have such a disease and it has been caused by work. Your three years would start effective from that date. However you could still be thought of as having such knowledge and starting the time limitation if you were told that you had a hearing loss at your annual work’s medical even if no cause was stated.  You could even find yourself facing such an argument if you knew that you had a hearing loss or problem with your hands but did nothing about it in terms of seeing your GP...