Other veterans recovered hundreds of thousands. Why did your solicitor settle for a fraction of that?
Before getting into the legal analysis, three things worth knowing about how military hearing loss settlements actually work:
1. Military hearing loss claims can settle for very substantial sums. Settlements in the hundreds of thousands are not unusual for severe, bilateral hearing damage with long service exposure, significant tinnitus, and a clear impact on daily life and work capacity.
2. Settlement values vary significantly based on how the claim is built. The quality of medical evidence, the thoroughness of the impact assessment, the solicitor's knowledge of comparable outcomes, and their willingness to litigate rather than accept early offers all directly affect what the claim achieves.
3. If your settlement was significantly lower than comparable cases, the explanation may not be the severity of your condition. It may be the quality of your representation.
The range of outcomes
No two cases are identical, and settlement values in hearing loss claims do legitimately vary. Bilateral damage is worth more than unilateral. Greater loss is worth more than lesser. Longer service, greater exposure, and documented failures to provide protection all push the value upward. These factors matter and they produce genuine differences between cases.
But when veterans who served in similar roles, with similar levels of exposure, and with similar audiological profiles end up with settlements that differ by five or six figures, the explanation is rarely just the facts of the case. It is usually the quality of the representation. That is a consistent finding across the professional negligence work done in this area.
What specialist representation actually delivers
A solicitor who specialises in military hearing loss claims knows what those claims are worth because they have done hundreds of them. They know where the value lies. They know which arguments the other side will make and how to counter them. They know when to push for more and when a particular offer represents the realistic ceiling. That expertise translates directly into better outcomes for clients.
A general practitioner who takes on a military hearing loss claim as one of many different types of case they handle does not have that depth of knowledge. They may process the claim competently in procedural terms without ever getting close to what it was actually worth. The client never knows the difference, because they have no basis for comparison.
The negligence standard
Professional negligence does not require proof of dishonesty or deliberate failure. It requires proof that the solicitor fell below the standard of care that a competent solicitor in that position should have met. In hearing loss claims, that often means failing to build comprehensive medical evidence, failing to properly advise on litigation as an alternative to accepting an early offer, or recommending acceptance of a figure that a specialist with real knowledge of the market would have challenged.
If that description fits your experience of how the claim was handled, the shortfall between what you received and what you might have received with better representation may be recoverable through a professional negligence claim. The starting point is an independent assessment of what happened.
The route to finding out
The only way to know whether your settlement was under settled through poor representation is to have the claim reviewed by someone with the specialist knowledge to assess it properly. That is not the original solicitor, who has an obvious interest in defending their own work. It is an independent specialist who can compare what was achieved against what a competent solicitor in that position should have achieved.
That is exactly what Sold Short provides. The review is free, it is independent, and it answers the question that many veterans have been wondering about for years without ever having a reliable way to find out.
The free assessment through Sold Short is the first step. It answers the question that matters most: was the handling of the claim adequate, and if not, what was the consequence for the settlement value? With that answer clearly established, the decision about whether to pursue a professional negligence claim can be made on a properly informed basis.
Veterans who have not yet taken this step have nothing to lose by doing so. The assessment is free, the findings are independent, and the answer one way or the other puts the veteran in a position to decide what, if anything, to do next with full information rather than ongoing uncertainty about whether they were fairly treated.
Sold Short works with veterans who believe their claim was worth more than they received. Specialist solicitors. No win no fee. Free assessment. Speak to us today.