There are many regulations spelling out what employers should and shouldn’t do to protect the health and safety of their employees and other people who might be injured because of their activities. However, accidents still happen all too frequently.
Defective machinery
Your employer has to maintain all machinery and equipment in a safe condition so that it doesn’t cause injury. If you are injured because a machine is not properly guarded, your employer will be liable even if the machine was originally built without adequate guards – if your employers allow you to remove guards, they will still be liable for any injuries although your damages are likely to be reduced to take account of your share of the blame for working without the guard.
Slips and trips at work
Employers have to have effective procedures in place to ensure that floors are kept clean and any spillages or debris cleared up as soon as possible to ensure that people don’t slip, trip or fall. You may be found partly to blame if you should have seen the spillage and avoided it or cleaned it up yourself but your employer will still have to pay some compensation.
Construction sites
The building and construction industry is responsible for far too many accidents and these can be very serious in terms of the physical injuries and often lead to very large claims for future loss of earnings when the victim can’t return to work.
Over the years we have dealt with many accidents involving scaffolders or roofers who fall from scaffolding or ladders and land flat on their feet breaking their heel bones. Not only is this extremely painful but it often leaves the victim unable to work on uneven ground or climb ladders or scaffolding so construction work becomes impossible. They may be able to retrain for office work but they usually can’t earn anything like as much as they did. We calculate what their earnings to retirement might have been and claim the difference between that and what they are now able to earn.
Horse Riding Claims
Tamsin Day, one of the partners in the personal injury department, is a keen rider and has dealt with a range of riding and horse related claims. Claims can arise on the roads when, for example, a driver gets too close or passes too fast and frightens the horse causing the rider to be thrown off and injured. On the other hand, drivers can be injured when horses escape because their field was not fenced properly in which case they may have a claim against the landowner.
Insurers for riding school owners often argue that horses are unpredictable and that riders have to accept that – nevertheless we have still been able to win claims where the planning or supervision of the lessons or hacks was not up to scratch. The riding school should foresee and plan for the way horses behave in different situations, as we have seen in the following cases:
Where a child lost control of the horse in a lesson because the horse wanted to get to the hay which had been left in the sand school.
A hack was badly planned and run and a horse who had been trying to get ahead throughout the hack was left behind on the last canter. He then bucked and galloped off unseating the rider.
A club allowed a disabled horse to be used in an organised activity. The horse did not belong to the child and was not used to its surroundings. He behaved erratically as he had not been allowed to calm down before the lesson and the child was thrown off.
A rider leading her horse back from a field lost control of it. The horse bowled over the person in front causing serious injuries. The injured person had legal expenses cover but the insurers refused to fund the case – she came to us and we dealt with it on a “no win, no fee” basis so she was able to recover compensation for her injuries.
Horses may be unpredictable but some situations are accidents waiting to happen. With a little forethought, these accidents could have been prevented.
Road Accidents
We deal with a whole range of accidents from the all too frequent rear end shunt (which typically causes whiplash) to head on collisions causing catastrophic head or spinal injuries.
In the vast majority of RTA’s it isn’t difficult to agree who was to blame but sometimes it takes some detective work to find out what happened. In fatal accidents or where the claimant has no memory of the accident, we may have to get expert evidence in the form of an accident reconstruction report to work out what happened – usually with the help of police sketch plans and photographs showing skids marks and vehicle debris. We may also make house to house enquiries to find people living nearby who might have seen something but weren’t interviewed by the Police. Medical records can give some help by showing the position of the injuries and ambulance crews sometimes remember details that can help to pinpoint where vehicles, passengers and pedestrians ended up.
It is quite common for the parties to agree a “split” on liability because with road accidents the accident was often caused by both drivers or a driver and a pedestrian making mistakes and misjudging how much time they had to overtake or cross the road safely. Even if you can’t remember what happened or think it was at least partly your own fault, you may still be able to claim some compensation so it’s worth asking us for advice.
Motorcycle accidents
It is an unfortunate fact that motorcyclists come off worst in an accident and account for the worst injuries we see in road accident cases. Even with a helmet on, you aren’t immune to serious head injuries which can have a devastating effect on you and your loved ones. Even if you wear full leathers, nothing can protect you from a spinal injury or other serious injury to your limbs.
If the worst does happen, you need lawyers who will fight your corner when the other side inevitably blames you – usually their insurers will say you were driving too fast or overtaking when you shouldn’t have. Even if it was partly your fault, we will do everything we can to make sure you get the most compensation.
Fatal accidents
Unfortunately the worst does happen sometimes. While financial compensation is probably the last thing you want to think about, if you lose a relative in an accident, money is likely to become an issue you need to address. If a family loses its main breadwinner or its main carer, it will need financial help to carry on. We can advise as to who can claim and for what.
Claims include a statutory award for bereavement (now a little over £11,000) which is only available to certain relatives, and a reasonable sum for the funeral expenses.
Spouses and children usually have a claim for their financial dependency for which the amount of compensation can be substantial but this depends on many factors. As these claims can be very complex, they are dealt with by our most senior and experienced solicitors who can represent the family at an inquest if necessary and will treat them with the utmost sensitivity.
We recognise that it is a very difficult time for all concerned and will do our very best to alleviate at least some of stress which will be caused by the inevitable financial pressures.
Professional negligence
Sometimes things go wrong and solicitors miss time limits so that their client can no longer pursue their claim. More rarely, they undervalue a case and the client gets less than they should. Fortunately solicitors have to have insurance to cover claims like these. We have to work out what the claim would have been worth if things had gone to plan and then claim what the client lost from the solicitors and their insurers.
We have acted in a number of claims where solicitors missed the 3 year deadline for issuing proceedings and the client was left with no chance of recovering damages from the person who caused the accident. We have to show that the client would have won or settled the original claim and work out what it would have been worth.
We have also acted when the claim was settled for much less than it should have been. We are currently acting for a client who suffered a very severe head injury – because his legal advisers missed a very significant claim for future care needs, we estimate that he got around £1 million less than he should have done. We are acting for him on a no win, no fee basis with the help of leading counsel (a QC) and a junior barrister. We have arranged an “After the Event” insurance policy which will cover the other side’s legal costs if we lose, in order to protect what funds the client has left.
Defective Products
If you buy something like, for example, a power tool or a sofa, you don’t expect them to cause you an injury. The power tool should have been properly designed and tested to make sure that not only does it work but also that it is safe. You don’t expect a sofa to burn your skin when you sit on it.
However, tests are usually only carried out on a representative sample rather than on every single item and things can go wrong at any stage in the manufacturing process. We have dealt with cases involving all sorts of defective goods. One client bought an angle grinder from a welll known DIY store – part of the tool sheared off when he first used it and caused serious abrasions to his arm. Another bought a pressure washer – the hose developed a small hole allowing a jet of water at high pressure to drill a hole in his arm. We have clients involved in a group action in which hundreds of people are claiming damages for chemical burns caused when they sat on sofas bought from well known retailers.
Even if you didn’t buy the product yourself, you may still have a claim against the manufacturer or the company which supplied it. If it was manufactured outside England and Wales, you can make your claim against whoever imported it.
We do have to show that the product is actually defective and this usually requires evidence from experts such as engineers, chemists, and metallurgists as well as medical experts. If we have enough to prove there was a defect, the other side will be liable for your injuries and any related financial losses.
Some of the retailers we come across can be very difficult to deal with. If there is a defect in one of their products, they don’t want to end up having to deal with lots of claims or organise a recall especially when the product didn’t make them much profit in the first place. Whatever you do, don’t give them the defective product until we have had a chance to have it tested ourselves – once they have it back, you may never see it again.
