Advice Centre

We are pleased to confirm that we obtained £75,000 in compensation for our Romanian client who was hit by a car whilst crossing a road in London.

Client was represented by Mr Wiktor Buza Partner and Solicitor with support from Alexandru Duminica Paralegal at IMD Solicitors.

Facts

Our client a Romanian national was staying in London visiting a friend. On the day of the accident he went out to the nearby petrol station to buy some groceries.

Our client advised us that the petrol station was on the other side of a dual carriageway and our client approached the pedestrian traffic lights. When he was approaching the traffic lights he believed that he heard a buzzer indicating that the light has turned green.

Thinking that the road was clear he quickly stepped into the road and when he did so he was hit by an approaching vehicle travelling at approximately 40 miles per hour.

Injuries

This was a very serious collision and our client was thrown over the car landing on the road behind. He was immediately taken to the nearby hospital where he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and multiple fractures to legs and arms.

He spent several weeks in hospital and on discharge he went back to Romania to continue treatment.

Few months after the accident his friend suggested that he should contact IMD Solicitors specialist Serious and Catastrophic injury team for help in obtaining compensation.

We decided to help him.

Driver of the vehicle blames our client for causing the accident

We contacted the insurer of the vehicle which hit our client and they started investigations.

Few weeks later we received a response advising that our client was to blame for the accident because:

• He ran out into the road without checking for presence of cars
• He ran at an angle to the pedestrian crossing which was just short distance away
• He ran on the road when the light on the crossing was showing red to the pedestrians

We were served with a witness statement from an independent witness present at the scene who confirmed the above facts.

At this stage the case did not look good for our client and it seemed that he was to blame for the accident and he may not receive any compensation.

The additional problem was that our client suffered partial amnesia as a result of the accident so he could not provide and accurate description of his movements on the day.

He wanted to withdraw the case at this stage admitting he was to blame but we convinced him to continue until we investigate further.

Further investigations

We firstly checked the location of the accident and the location of the independent witness at the time of the accident.

We established that the witness could not have seen the accident fully as he was too far from the scene and it would have been partially obstructed by vehicles.

This meant that his statement was only partially useful for the other side in putting the blame on our client.

We than obtained police report. The report seemed to support the version of events suggested by the other side when blaming our client for causing accident.

Sadly on this occasion police has not done their investigations properly and lost all CCTV footage and we were unable to obtain replacements.

We were however able to find amongst the documents a short statement from the driver.

We noted that immediately prior to hitting our client he was distracted by looking at his speedometer and indirectly admitted that he was not aware of our client’s presence until immediately prior to collision.

This gave us enough leverage to start negotiating our client’s settlement.

Negotiations and Settlement

With the above established we returned to the other side to convince them that the driver of the vehicle must have been at least partially to blame for the accident and to negotiate settlement for our client.

The negotiations were difficult but we eventually managed to obtain £75,000 in compensation for our client.

The compensation amount reflects the fact that if the case proceeded to Trial our client would have been partially blamed for causing the accident by running out on the street and crossing the road when the light was indicating red for pedestrians.

Having said so the driver was equally to blame for the accident as he admitted being distracted whilst driving and thus not being able to reduce or avoid the risk of collision.

Thanks from the client

Our client who resides in Romania was very happy with the outcome and thanked the team for not giving up on him even when he was blamed for the accident.

He advised that he can finally get back to his normal life and put the accident behind him.

Our lawyers

Our specialist team of Solicitors has significant experience representing clients injured in road traffic accidents and we are negotiating the highest compensation. We are prepared to undertake all the necessary investigations to ensure that you are successful in your case. If you or your family or friends suffered injuries in an accident that was not your fault please contact our team on 0330 107 0107 or email us at info@imd.co.uk.