Personal Injury under Cyprus law is legal term related to physical or emotional injuries.

In Cyprus many law firms or individual personal injury lawyers including lawyers of our law firm specialize on personal injury actions.   The term is generally used to refer to a type of tort court case declaring that the plaintiff’s injury has been caused by the negligence of another person.

The most common types of personal injury in Cyprus are road traffic accidents, common assault, employer’s liability resulting from accident at work, and accidents in general being caused by someone’s fault or negligence or even inability to prevent such accident from happening; medical negligence is also included under the general personal injury term though it can be separately dealt with under professional negligence. Furthermore, personal injury can result from occupier’s liability and faulty liability caused by animals.

If it is proved that the damage caused by another’s party liability, the injured party may be entitled to monetary compensation.

Personal injury litigation proceedings in Cyprus commence when a specially drafted personal injury claim is filed by writ against the defendant.  Personal injury attorneys or, when involved to such personal injury litigation in Cyprus, will most probably send a notice to the Insurance Company within few days from the filing of the writ.   A defendant may further file for a third party to join the action, the so-called third party procedure, by application to the court. The plaintiff may further bring in a second defendant to the action by application to the court (e.g. an employer who might be liable for the act of the defendant). If more than one person is liable by their acts for the injury to the plaintiff, they can all join as defendants in the same personal injury litigation in Cyprus.

There are two elements of personal injury damages in Cyprus:

1. The first element is the monetary compensation of the claimant for his personal injuries caused by another party’s actions in order to award him a sum of money. This is generally expressed as a conventional award.
2. Secondly there is recompense for provable financial loss. This can be computed as an exact figure such as a claimant who is experiencing minor injuries requiring a month off work without pay for which he can be rewarded by the exact net amount of his loss. There exist more complex cases, particularly when a claimant will never return to work, compensation is based on predictions of future loss which, there exist difficulties to calculate the loss.

It is vital for this purpose to divide compensatory damages in personal injuries litigation in Cyprus into two parts, general damages and special damages.

Compensatory damages: A personal injury lawyer in Cyprus will represent the plaintiff in order to compensate him for his losses resulting from the injury. Compensatory damages are divided into non-economic and economic damages. Economic damages are easier to prove than non-economic damages. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of consortium. Economic damages include medical expenses, property damages, and loss of earnings.

General damages:  Are the compensatory amounts that are a usual consequence of the injury. General damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of consortium.

1. Pain and Suffering: The Plaintiff at personal injury litigation in Cyprus has to prove that due to the injury he/she has pain and suffering. Pain and suffering includes pain from the accident and pain after the accident. If the plaintiff has permanent injury from the accident is entitled to be covered fully and permanently for the pain and suffer. To verify the monetary amount of pain and suffering, it can be examined by the length of any hospital stays, and by the number and the importance of the surgeries. Experienced personal injury lawyers in Cyprus may provide for an approximate amount of damages the plaintiff may be entitled to and be in a position to settle such claim with an insurance company before even filing for personal injury litigation.
2. Emotional distress damages: Such damages for personal injury in Cyprus may be awarded for mental anguish. Mental anguish comprise by depression, humiliation, anxiety, embarrassment and inconvenience in everyday life caused by the injury. Emotional distress includes the fear from the accident. Emotional distress damages may be difficult to be proved in Cyprus because the damages are subjective however an experienced personal injury attorney may well succeed on such settlement.
3. Loss of consortium:   Is the loss of the advantage in the marital relationship because the injured spouse is not well with his health to provide those benefits e.g. decrease or loss of a sex life, loss of the injure spouse’s household help.

Special damages:  Such damages for personal injury in Cyprus are the specific amounts, actual monetary damages which represent financial loss to the claimant. Special damages include economic damages as: medical expenses; private medical or nursing treatment, property damages, and provable loss of earnings until trial. In addition special damages also include, damage to clothing, repairs to vehicles, hire of alternative transport, extra travel costs.