Compensation for harm to a serviceman's health and for moral damage

What is happening

The insurance sum and the lump sum benefit are payments under Law No. 52-FZ and Law No. 306-FZ: they are calculated on fixed rules and take no account of what you have actually lost. With a serious injury, the cost of treatment, rehabilitation and care usually goes well beyond them, and earning capacity is reduced for a long time.

A separate case is harm caused not by combat but by identifiable people or an organisation: a breach of safety rules, substandard medical care, the acts of a fellow serviceman, a collision involving military vehicles. There a defendant exists, and the harm is recovered in addition to the insurance payments.

Moral damage is a claim in its own right, for physical and mental suffering. Its amount is fixed by the court and is not absorbed by insurance payments, which is why it is normally brought together with the claim for harm to health.

What the law says

• The law on the status of servicemen (Federal Law 76-FZ) preserves the right to compensation for harm to health on the general grounds of civil law.
• Recoverable heads include treatment, medicines, rehabilitation, outside care and lost income — everything supported by documents.
• The insurance sum and the lump sum benefit are different in nature and do not extinguish the right to claim actual harm and moral damage.
• Compensation for moral damage is set by the court on the nature of the suffering, the gravity of the injury and the circumstances; Articles 151 and 1101 of the Civil Code set no figure in advance.
• The key documents are the military medical board finding on the causal link with service and the medical records: without them the link is hard to prove.
• Claims for harm to health are not barred by the general limitation period, although recovery for the past is allowed only for a limited stretch of time.

What we do

• We assess the prospects: who is answerable for the harm and what can realistically be proved.
• We assemble the evidence — medical records, the medical board finding, the internal inquiry file, witness accounts.
• We quantify the harm from documents: treatment, rehabilitation, care and lost service pay.
• We draft and file the claim for harm to health and for compensation of moral damage.
• We apply for court-ordered expert examination where the cause of the injury or the loss of capacity is in dispute.
• We conduct the case at every instance and see the judgment enforced.

What we need from you

• The military medical board finding with its wording on the causal link of the injury or illness.
• Medical records: hospital discharge summaries, doctors' findings, prescriptions, a disability certificate if you have one.
• Documents on the incident: the wound certificate, the inquiry file, written reports.
• Invoices and contracts for treatment, medicines, rehabilitation, assistive devices and care.
• Certificates of your service pay before and after the injury.
• Your contract and extracts from orders on the tasks you were carrying out.