Attendant care (third-party assistance)
The head of loss that compensates the victim's need for help from another person in daily activities, often the heaviest item in serious bodily injury claims.
Attendant care compensates the cost of the human assistance the victim needs to perform daily activities they can no longer do alone: getting up, washing, dressing, eating, going out, being supervised. The expert determines the volume, in hours per day and level of skill, active or passive, and compensation is calculated on an hourly cost multiplied by the number of hours, then capitalized for the future. Two principles weigh heavily: compensation is due even when help is provided by an unpaid relative, without reduction, and it covers the social charges and paid leave of an employee who would provide it. For a young spinal cord or brain injury victim, this item alone can amount to several million euros, which makes it a driver of large claims in motor and medical liability, and of excess of loss treaties in those lines.
A 25-year-old victim left quadriplegic after a 2023 accident is found to need 12 hours of help a day: at 25 euros an hour, the annual need reaches 109,500 euros, and its lifetime capitalization runs into the millions of euros.
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