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Personal injury solicitors
10/07/2008
Can I open my eyes yet?
I could never be a personal injury solicitor. I get squeamish even reading about open shin fractures, let alone having to look at pictures of them and receiving detailed personal testimony of hearing the bone "snap", or ligaments "pop" etc. But researching information regarding compensation claims for sporting injury, I have found myself mired in bone cracking, muscle tearing, eye-socket gouging territory of almost unbearable proportion.
I remember recently watching a game of Rugby Union with my partner; I was in and out, doing a bit of ironing and wandered back into the room as Will Greenwood announced, in his commentary, something along the lines of, "I've seen this sort of thing before and it doesn't look good."
I instantly turned my attention to the screen (funny that, but you do have to look, don't you?) to see a crowd of physios and doctors around the stricken player who was motionless, as if felled by a marauding elephant (no jokes about the front row here, please).
He was very badly hurt and the cameras were hastily taken off the scene to concentrate on other more able players as they stood and waited for their colleague to be made better. In due course he was stretchered off the pitch with his ankle in an industrial strength brace and an oxygen mask covering his pain stricken face. As usual, with the rugby fraternity, the whole ground applauded as he left the field.
The game went on, it was won or lost, but for the injured player it was the beginning of a bout of painful surgery and rehabilitation for the dislocation fracture of his ankle that would take months. It was also the loss of an England shirt; he had been picked to represent his country on tour to New Zealand, only days earlier. (Some would say he was better off out of it as England were comprehensively battered in the International Test matches.)
A day or so later, I just happened to be on the internet and thought I would find out how the young rugby star was doing. Instantaneously, up popped a full page picture of the player on the pitch just before he slumped to the ground. He was clutching at his knee, facing forward, but his foot was going in a distinctly different direction, suggesting something terrible afoot!
It was grim.
But perhaps not as awful as those slow motion replays of bad tackles on footballers where you can actually see the bone snap. Sorry, my stomach is churning just typing the words.
Our rugby player will live to play another game. His career is destined to re-start a little over six months after the injury took place. He was injured in a perfectly legitimate piece of rugby game-play, having been tackled and finding himself at the bottom of a ruck. It is, as they say, just one of those things.
Footballers though, often have very different tackling tales to tell, as I found at the start of my personal injury solicitor sports injury research.
A semi-professional footballer who played for Altrincham FC suffered a career ending injury after a tackle caused a horrific open fracture of the shin. His heart stopped shortly after and he almost died. His career ended there and then.
Another player, a decade younger than the Altrincham man, who was destined for a top flight career at Manchester United, is also suing for compensation. His career ended when his leg was broken in two places following a tackle during a reserve team game.
Such are the vagaries of sporting potential and the difference of earnings from one division to another that one man is suing for around £100,000, the other, for around £16 million. See if you can work out which is which.
You don't have to be a personal injury solicitor to spot it. And I warn you, do not look at the pictures (I just know you're going to Google them right now, aren't you?).
