Personal injury news roundup: 7 days ended 19 Aug 2014:
Sometimes the prevailing wisdom, when it comes to personal injury claims, is that paying out compensation is a waste of money – and sometimes it turns out correct.
I hate to even admit this, but sometimes I can’t wonder if there aren’t actual spurious accident claims brought by those that are supposedly injured. Notice I’m not pointing the finger at personal injury solicitors, mind you – I’m simply saying that sometimes the money spent on compensation might be better spent elsewhere.
Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about, if I’m being unclear: did you hear recently how the legal bill for Norfolk Police over the last year hit almost £400,000? That’s an amazing amount of money, and much of it was paid out to staff and members of the public that were injured accidentally due to police negligence or equipment failures. Now what I wonder is what could have happened if even half of that figure was spent on equipment, infrastructure, and training expenses for the Norfolk Police? Do you think the same amount of injuries and accidents would have occurred? Somehow I doubt that.
Meanwhile it’s not just huge organisations running on taxpayer money that are guilty of being wasteful. Individuals can be just as to blame, and there’s another story this week that absolutely burned my biscuits after discovering it. Apparently there was an instance where an 18 year old man was rumbled by the fuzz, being caught with drugs on his person. However it wasn’t just a few pills – we’re talking a full 900 tablets of the sedative known as diazepam. 900 bloody tablets! Are you mad? Who walks around with that much on them?
Now, where did this fine young man get the cash to buy such a shedload of drugs? Well, surprise surprise – he had been given a large personal injury compensation award for an accident he was involved in recently. The brainless bloke went out and spent heaven knows how much cash on these drugs instead of doing something useful with them, like paying his bills or depositing it in the bank. What a pillock.