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Out-of-court costs

Find out how it is possible for us to work for you free of charge

Free legal assistance for personal injury, what exactly is that? Because in the Netherlands the reasonable costs of legal assistance must be reimbursed by the liable insurer, we do not have to charge you for those costs. This makes our legal assistance free for you. With out-of-court legal aid costs being part of your damages, and if it is established that the other party is liable for your accident, we can recover these out-of-court costs from the other party, so you do not have to pay us anything. You will get this confirmed in black and white.

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Double reasonableness test

Insurers pay out-of-court costs using the so-called ‘double reasonableness test’. This involves the insurer assessing whether:

It is considered reasonable for the victim to seek legal assistance AND
Whether the amount of those costs submitted is reasonable.

If the costs as incurred by JBL&G are found to be reasonable by the insurer, they will therefore be reimbursed in full. If the insurer does not find the amount of our costs to be reasonable, then these costs will not be reimbursed by the insurer.

What if not all costs incurred are reimbursed?

We will make every effort to recover your full damages. Should the associated costs not be fully reimbursed by the other party, because the insurer does not consider the amount of these costs reasonable, these costs will not be charged to you. After all, you have no control over how much we claim and therefore how high our costs end up being. We therefore consider any additional costs incurred to recover your damages as a risk for our firm.

Liability does not come around

Sometimes liability does not come around at all. Or an amount remains outstanding due to the double reasonableness test. JBL&G does what is necessary to recover accident victims’ damages from the other party, and if liability does not come around – even after consulting with one of our LSA in-house lawyers and possibly estimating proceedings – then that is up to us and we book those hours off.

You have suffered personal injury – through no fault of your own – and you would like to recover it from the other party, the one who caused the damage. Naturally, you would then prefer to see your own damages paid as soon as possible.

The lawyers at JBL&G can help you claim your damages. Your damages may include:

Health insurance deductible
Domestic help to be hired by you
Missed income due to (temporary) inability to do your job properly etc.
Compensation for pain and suffering etc.

In the Netherlands, the rule is usually: he who demands, proves.

Legal assistance

In many cases after an accident, you fortunately do not have to go to court to get compensation for your personal injury. As long as it is not necessary to go to court (and this is the case in 95% of cases), the costs for legal assistance incurred by you are called ‘out-of-court costs’.
If liability is established, the other party (or its insurer) must also pay the costs of legal assistance to recover these costs. That is how it is stated in the law under Section 6:96 of the Civil Code.
Extrajudicial costs such as those incurred by JBL&G’s lawyers are part of the total personal injury claim in your personal injury case. Therefore, these costs should also be paid by your counterparty, as they are part of your personal injury claim. After all, without an accident, you would not have had to incur these costs. Therefore, these costs will be borne by the liable insurer.
The extrajudicial costs do not affect the amount of your compensation.

In the first conversation as you have with us, we will go into detail about how things stand with extrajudicial costs. Therefore, please contact us if you wish to have your personal injury case handled by our firm.