A serious motorcycle injury claim is not a paperwork exercise. It is a multi-year case requiring liability investigation, biomechanical reconstruction, future-loss modelling, and rehabilitation funding running in parallel with litigation. The wrong solicitor on day one costs riders six and seven figures by year three.
What counts as a serious injury
We treat an injury as serious when it permanently affects your capacity to ride, work, or live independently. The legal threshold is broader than that, but the cases we run share a common feature: the medical recovery curve never returns to pre-accident baseline.
Common injury categories in our caseload:
- Spinal cord injury — complete and incomplete paraplegia, tetraplegia, cauda equina syndrome
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI) — severe, moderate and the often-undervalued mild TBI cases
- Limb amputation — traumatic and surgical, including phantom limb and prosthetic adaptation costs
- Polytrauma — multiple system injury (typically pelvis, chest, long-bone, abdominal)
- Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) post-orthopaedic injury
- Significant orthopaedic injury with permanent functional loss
What a serious-injury case looks like
It is a 24–36 month engagement minimum, often longer where neurology is involved. Liability investigation runs alongside medical evidence — we are not waiting for one before the other.
Liability work in a typical case includes scene attendance, accident reconstruction by an instructed engineer, helmet and kit damage assessment, ECU download where available, witness tracing, and police-report analysis. Medical work runs to consultant orthopaedic, neurological, and psychiatric reports — sometimes a dozen experts before settlement.
How serious-injury compensation is calculated
Damages in Scotland are split between solatium (pain, suffering, loss of amenity — including any psychological injury) and patrimonial loss (financial). The headline figure most riders see is solatium — but in a serious-injury case the patrimonial element can dwarf it.
Patrimonial loss in a life-changing injury commonly includes: past and future loss of earnings, pension loss, care and attention costs (commercial and gratuitous), aids and equipment, accommodation adaptation, future medical and therapeutic costs, and loss of services.
- Past wage loss — calculated to the date of judgment
- Future wage loss — Ogden tables applied to multiplicand and multiplier
- Care costs — commercial rates with appropriate gratuitous uplifts under Section 8 Administration of Justice Act 1982
- Future medical — based on consultant evidence; lifetime calculations where required
- Accommodation — where pre-accident home cannot be adapted, full Roberts v Johnstone calculation
Rehabilitation runs in parallel
Through the Rehabilitation Code 2015 and our specialist rehabilitation partners, we secure case management and therapeutic input from week one — funded by the at-fault insurer where possible, by interim payments where not. Waiting for settlement to start rehab is poor practice and we don't do it.
What this means for you: the people putting you back together are working from day one, not month thirty.
Stephen's approach to running these
Stephen leads every serious-injury case strategically from intake to settlement, with the team running the day-to-day. The file does not get passed to a paralegal. We instruct Faculty of Advocates counsel where the complexity demands it.
Cases have been run against every major UK motor insurer, the Motor Insurers' Bureau, and a number of overseas insurers via the green-card system. The aim on every case is the same: a settlement that funds the rest of your life properly.