The simple answer is three years. This three-year period is known as the limitation period. By the end of the three years you either need to have settled your claim or issued court proceedings. After this date, the Defendant (the party alleged to have caused your injury) will have a complete defence to your claim regardless of whether or not they are liable.
With an accident like a road traffic accident or an accident at work, this period will start running the day after you are injured and therefore ends on the third anniversary of the accident causing your injury.
With medical negligence claims, where your injury is caused by negligent treatment from a medical professional, it may be that the negligent treatment you have received is not identified as being the cause of your injury until much later after it happened, sometimes months or even years. You still have the same three-year limitation period but the three years only starts on the date you have identified the cause of the injury, rather than when the injury originally occurred.
For children, the limitation period does not start until the day after the child’s 18th birthday so if they are injured when they are under the age of 18 then they have until their 21st birthday to settle or issue proceedings.
Is it possible to extend this three-year limitation period?
It is possible to extend the three-year period by agreement with the Defendant however you need to agree this extension before the limitation period has already ended. Once the three years is up, Defendants will generally not agree to waive their defence and you will need to seek the Court’s input.
The Court doesn’t extend the limitation period, it simply overrides it and determines that in spite of the limitation period passing, a Claimant can still make a claim. There are several factors that the Court will consider when asked to do this, amongst them is the reasons for and length of the delay as well as how difficult it will be for the parties to make an effective claim given the longer period since the injury was caused. For example, will witnesses have forgotten the events, will paperwork or records have been destroyed etc.
One of the issues that our Personal Injury and Medical Negligence Team have come across recently is the extent to which the pandemic can be the cause of the delay. Unfortunately the Court will almost certainly not override the limitation period because you did not seek legal advice in time due to lockdowns etc. Firstly, the pandemic only accounts for perhaps a year out of possible three years when you could have begun your claim. And secondly, even in lockdowns, the courts and solicitors that deal with them continued to run and function as usual, albeit with some delays and slightly longer wait times in the Court’s case.
Beyond this, it is not clear exactly where the Court will stand on overriding limitations for reasons related to Covid, but for similar reasons as set out above, many practitioners are not expecting a great deal of leniency. It is therefore important to get some legal advice as soon as you suspect you have a claim, even if this is just to get some initial advice while you decide whether to pursue the claim or not. During the initial consultation, our team can help you understand whether you have a potential claim and take you through how a claim will work.
For more information and to find out how we can help you, please contact us on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and a member of our Team will be in touch.