Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

Personal injury definition

What does Personal injury mean? Personal injury describes harm to a person’s body or mind, as opposed to damage to property or pure economic loss. In practice it underpins civil claims in tort/delict, including negligence, occupiers’ liability, employers’ liability, product liability, road traffic accidents and clinical negligence. Across England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland, legislation (notably limitation statutes and, in Ireland, Personal Injuries Assessment Board legislation) commonly defines personal injuries to include disease and any impairment of a person’s physical or mental condition. Recognised heads therefore cover physical injury, industrial disease and psychiatric injury. Fatal injury claims are related but procedurally distinct. Key legal features...

Scotland’s Compulsory Personal Injury Pre-Action Protocol for Claims under £25,000: Scope, Stages, Timescales, Settlement and Expenses Sanctions

Published by a LexisNexis PI & Clinical Negligence expert

Practice notes

Background

In 1995, at the beginning of his examination of the civil justice system in England and Wales, Lord Woolf concluded that the principal difficulties were cost, delay, and complexity. As pressures on the modern justice system grew, the prevailing Rules and procedures proved unsustainable and inefficient. Following his review, Lord Woolf issued a series of recommendations in his final report and, consequently, the civil justice system underwent substantial reform. A key change was the introduction of compulsory Pre-action protocols for various categories of proceedings, including Personal injury matters. These protocols are a body of rules addressing how parties should behave before litigation commences. Their primary objective is to foster the early and full exchange of documents and information about a potential claim, in the hope that settlement can be reached without court action. They were intended to avoid litigation where possible or, at the very least, to reduce the issues in contention. In 2005, the Law Society of Scotland introduced a pre-action protocol for personal injury claims in Scotland. However, because it lacked a statutory basis, compliance was not obligatory. Its scope was confined to claims...

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Nicola Edgar

Morton Fraser MacRoberts LLP

Nicola is a Partner at Morton Fraser MacRoberts LLP. She is an accredited specialist in personal injury law and certified by the Law Society of Scotland as a trauma informed lawyer. She is also highly experienced in dealing with clinical negligence litigation. Acting on behalf of both pursuer and defender clients, Nicola specialises in high value, complex claims with a particular focus on fatal claims. She regularly acts on behalf of individuals, large scale insurers, commercial clients and public sector clients and advises on a wide variety of claims including those involving employers' liability, public liability, cycling accidents, motor accidents, occupational disease and accidents abroad. She has successfully resolved medical negligence claims following delayed and missed diagnosis, together with negligent treatment. Nicola deals with pre-litigated cases in which she focusses on negotiating satisfactory settlements on behalf of her clients. If an agreement is not reached, she provides sturdy advice based on her...

Web page updated on 26/05/2026

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