Personal Injury - Legal Jargon

Making a claim for Personal Injury can be stressful and worrying. We do not want the legal process and the wording we use to make the situation worse so we strive to keep legal jargon to a minimum. We appreciate you will come across terms you may not understand so we have tried to explain these as clearly as possible in the definitions below, so that you fully understand the process you are going through.

If you need further explanation then please do contact us.

Adjournment

When a court hearing is moved to another date.

Affidavit

A formal written declaration made on oath. If the contents of the affidavit are proven to be false then the person who provided the affidavit may be in contempt of Court.

Aggravated Damages

Additional damages awarded as a result of the Defendant’s conduct. Aggravated Damages are generally to compensate the Claimant for the additional harm that has been suffered (see Damages).

Allocation

The process of deciding which set of court rules to apply to a specific case.

See Small Claims track, Fast track and Multi track.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

The process of settling a claim on terms decided by the parties outside of the normal Court procedure.

Appeal

In the event that an Order is wrong in law, the process where a party applies to a superior Court to reverse the decision.

Breach of Duty

Medical professionals owe their patients a ‘Duty of Care’ – a responsibility to take care of them properly and to a reasonable standard. If the care given to a patient does not live up to the required standard and it could reasonably have been avoided by the professional concerned, then this may be classed as a Breach of Duty. This is also known as “negligence”.