Contract Law · 08.11.2024

Personal Injury Lawyer in Vietnam: What You Can Claim and Who Pays

You were hurt in Vietnam. Perhaps a motorbike hit you, perhaps something went wrong at a clinic, perhaps you fell where a business should have kept you safe. You want to know whether a claim is worth making, and who will actually pay. UniLaw works in English from Hanoi, Ho Chi Mi…

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By Lawyer Nguyen Nhu Hai – UniLaw LLC

UniLaw works in English from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang. A personal injury lawyer in Vietnam here reads three things before saying anything: the incident record, the insurance behind the other side, and the evidence for each item of loss. That order matters, and this page explains why.

When a personal injury lawyer in Vietnam takes a case

Vietnamese courts compensate proven loss and nothing else. There are no punitive damages, no pain-and-suffering awards on the American scale, and no jury to persuade.

So a claim is usually worth making when three things line up. Someone else’s act or omission caused the injury. The loss is documented: hospital bills, income, receipts. And there is a solvent party or an insurer behind them.

It is usually not worth making in three situations. Fault is genuinely unclear. The only evidence is your own account. Or the sums involved are smaller than two years of proceedings will cost. We say that at the first meeting rather than a year in.

What a personal injury lawyer in Vietnam can claim for you

Article 590 of the Civil Code, Law No. 91/2015/QH13, sets the list for harm to health.

Reasonable costs of treatment, care and rehabilitation, including getting back function you lost.
Income you actually lost. Where your earnings vary, the court uses the average for comparable work.
The costs and lost income of whoever cared for you during treatment.
A sum for mental suffering. You may agree it; failing agreement the law caps it at fifty times the State base salary.

Where someone died, Article 591 adds funeral costs and support for dependants, with the family’s suffering capped at one hundred times the base salary.

Two things surprise foreign clients. Treatment abroad is recoverable, but only where the file shows it was reasonable. And under Article 585 you lose the share of the loss your own conduct caused. A helmet or a seatbelt is therefore worth money as well as safety.

Who actually pays

Rarely the individual who hurt you. Article 597 makes a company answer for harm its people cause on assigned duties. It then recovers from the person at fault. Article 601 goes further for a source of extreme danger. That term expressly covers motor vehicles, power systems and operating industrial plant. Here the owner or operator pays even without fault. The only escapes are your own deliberate act and force majeure.

Behind that sits insurance, and in practice the insurer decides the number. Medical facilities must carry professional liability cover under Article 103 of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, Law No. 15/2023/QH15, and it pays the compensation and the legal costs.

Three decided cases showing how courts apply this, with the reasoning, sit in our guide to personal injury claims in Vietnam.

Motorbike and car accidents

This is the biggest group by far, and it has its own rule. A motor vehicle is a source of extreme danger under Article 601, so the owner or operator answers even where nobody proves fault. Where the driver was working, Article 597 brings in the employer, which usually means a solvent defendant and a policy behind it.

Four things at the scene decide the file later. Get the traffic police or inspectorate to make a record, even a short one. Photograph the vehicles, the road and the plates before anything moves. Take the names and numbers of anyone who saw it. And go to hospital the same day. A gap between the accident and the first medical record is the argument every insurer runs.

If you were the passenger, you have a claim whoever was at fault between the two drivers. That is worth knowing, because passengers often assume they are bystanders to someone else’s dispute.

Your deadline is three years

Article 588 gives three years to sue. The clock starts the day you knew or should have known of the infringement. Not from the day you finished treatment, and not from the day you decided to do something about it.

People lose good claims here. They wait for recovery, then for a police file, then for a family decision. Ask us early even if you do nothing for months, because the first task is only to fix the date the clock started.

What it costs and how long it takes

Court fees follow the value claimed, under the National Assembly Standing Committee resolution. The losing party bears them. We agree legal fees in the engagement letter before the file opens, never after.

On timing, negotiation with an insurer runs in months. A contested first-instance hearing takes roughly a year from filing, and an appeal adds six to twelve months. Most files that settle do so once the insurer accepts the evidence on causation. That is why the early document work decides the outcome.

How to instruct a personal injury lawyer in Vietnam

Bring whatever you have to the first meeting, even if it is incomplete.

Any report made at the time: traffic police or inspectorate, the facility’s own log, photographs, CCTV if you know it exists.
Hospital records, discharge papers and every receipt.
Proof of what you earned in the month before the injury.
Your insurance, travel or health policy, and the other side’s if you know it.
Your passport and visa or residence card.

Foreign documents need certified Vietnamese translation, and usually consular legalisation unless a treaty removes it. We start that early because it is slow. You can instruct us by power of attorney and need not attend every step in person.

Where we are

Offices in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang, working in English and Vietnamese. If you are outside Vietnam, or looking for the office closest to you, see finding a personal injury lawyer near you in Vietnam.

We act for injured people. We also act for companies and insurers who are sued, but never for both sides of the same dispute. Decided judgments with full reasoning are published on case.unilaw.vn.

Injury claims are one of three areas we handle for individuals. See the rest of our work for individuals in Vietnam.