Injury compensation claim over crocked Owen

Considering the injuries football star Michael Owen has suffered in his ten year career at the top of the profession - a long list that includes hamstring injuries, knee injuries and achilles injuries - it is a wonder he has managed to play at all. Let alone win so many honours.

Right now his club, Newcastle United, are in wrangle with the Football Association over an injury compensation claim that Newcastle believe they are owed over the damaged knee ligaments Owen suffered while on England duty at the World Cup last summer.

Premiership football is a high-risk, high-dividend business, as Newcastle have recently discovered to their cost. While Owen has been injured for the best part of the year, Newcastle have had to pay his £110,000 a week wages, leaving the club to struggle in the lower-half of the table, shorn of both their key player and the goals he provides.

This is why they have demanded a £6 million injury compensation claim from the FA, FIFA, and their own insurers. Most of that money has so far been recouped. However, they are now threatening an injunction against the FA, preventing Owen from playing for England until they have also received the £150,000 it has cost the club to rehabilitate the player back to full fitness.

The Premier League chairman, Sir Dave Richards, has thrown his respected support behind Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd.

In conversation with The Times, he is quoted as saying, "I think Freddy Shepherd is very, very justified in asking for certain things. It is something that needs sorting out in the game. I ask, 'Who has suffered out of this?' Well, Michael Owen has, but Newcastle United have as well because they have not had his services and someone has got to pay for all that."

Richards, is right to describe it as a 'test case'. Any precedent it sets will have lasting implications for other clubs seeking injury compensation claims for players who suffer serious personal injury while on duty for their clubs.

It is hard not to feel sympathy for Newcastle United, who have effectively been paying Owen to do nothing for the past ten months, because of an injury incurred while working for another employer.

The absurdity of the situation is best illuminated by an analogy. Imagine if I, car accident specialist and legal writer that I am, took a weekend job as say, an ice-cream van operator, to earn a little extra cash in order to keep my wife in an uninterrupted supply of new dresses and moisturisers.

Imagine, next, that I suffered, through no fault of my own, broken fingers and hands in a car accident while working my weekend ice-cream job. Would it be a reasonable expectation that my full-time employers continue to pay my wages while my typing fingers are bound and plastered? Would it be reasonable to send them, too, the cheque for my rehabilitative physiotherapy? I think the answer hardly needs questioning. Of course, were the above to actually happen, my only real option would be to make a no win, no fee car accident compensation claim.

Thankfully the situation is hypothetical. Though it must be said that my wife is at the moment, acquiring dresses at an alarming rate equal to that at which she flips through the fashion pages of glossy magazines, so it less hypothetical than I would like it to be.

Freddy Shepherd, the FA, and Michael Owen are dealing with dramatically bigger sums of money, and each have their own permanent legal advisors, so none are likely to be contacting a no win, no fee solicitors. However, the analogy still stands, because it is an issue of liability that needs to be addressed. That is why Newcastle are making the injury compensation claim. What, they argue, are the grounds on which the assumption that they are liable for the cost of a crocked Owen's wages and rehabilitation based?

It can be difficult to remember that within all this talk of injuries and legal posturing, there are grounds for optimism. Newcastle's manager, Glenn Roeder believes that just a few years ago the knee ligament injury suffered by Owen would probably have ended his career. So the fact that we are even discussing Michael Owen's England return is a testament to breakthrough in sports injury medical science.

Still, despite these breakthroughs, around 30 of Britain's 3000 professional footballers are forced to retire through injury each year. Fortunately, the majority of footballers now have insurance to cover career-ending injury compensation claims.

It is worth keeping in mind that what this 'test case' won't resolve is what to do when a player becomes injured as a result of his own recklessness. There have been several notorious instances over recent years of players receiving serious personal injury in car accidents caused through their own negligent driving. There has also been plenty of media uproar surrounding players who have become injured while being the aggressors in nightclub brawls.

It is not difficult to envisage a situation where aggrieved clubs make injury compensation claims against their own players. It may not have happened yet, but with so few footballers around who exhibit Owen's levels of professionalism, my advice would be to watch this space.

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Simon Jacobs, Car Accident Advice Line http://www.car-accident-claim.com/car-accident/a-look-a-car-accidents-in-wet-weather.htm helps people to claim compensation after they have been injured in a car accident that was not their fault. You can call us now on 0808 143 43 42