Claiming for Compensation: Slips and Trips.

A lot of people are concerned and confused when it comes to thinking about making a claim – particularly in accidents involving slips and trips. I suppose the reason is that many people simply aren’t sure whether they can make a claim after being involved in a slip or trip accident. Furthermore, people genuinely feel a little “silly” about making a claim for such a seemingly “small” accident.

It’s better to approach the entire situation in a different way: your slip / trip accident is not in any way “silly” or “small” – particularly if you have been seriously hurt. At the end of the day, if you have been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you have a claim for compensation.

Any shop, restaurant, cafe, bar, club, pub, museum – any premises which you are allowed to freely access – involves a duty of care owed to you by the owners of the place you are in. The premises must be safe to use, and no hazards should be allowed to develop and endanger anyone in the area. It’s an obvious and sensible piece of legislation – without this important duty of care in place, no one would be responsible for preventing anyone from coming to harm.

So, how can you end up injured and what should a premises owner be doing to prevent it from happening?

Slips

Moisture or liquid should never be allowed to accumulate on the floor of any premises you are visiting. It poses an obvious and foreseeable slipping risk. But this does not just extend to liquids: soft and wet items, such as fresh produce, can cause a slipping hazard when left unattended on a supermarket floor. The floor itself should be as safe to use as possible – over varnishing it could lead to a slippery and dangerous surface, or failing to prevent the risk from rain water being walked in to premises can result in the floor becoming wet and subsequently dangerous.

Overall, the premises owner has an important responsibility to ensure that no area is allowed to become slippery – if it does, the area needs to be quickly dried and / or cordoned off to prevent access to it, or sufficient warning signs need to be in place to warn of the danger. Regular inspections need to be carried out to ensure this can be upheld, and preventative measures (such as non-slip mats or better surface material) should be in place to minimise the risk of any potential slipping hazard.

Trips

Any area you visit should be free from defects or articles that could cause you to trip and fall to the ground. The surface itself must be constricted in a way that is free of any defects (e.g. a brick sticking up from the floor is an obvious hazard!), and there should be no “lips” or “juts” in the ground at all – whether it’s a  broken piece of tiling sticking up, or the lip of a carpet folded up. This extends to articles negligently been left on the ground – e.g. a box left unattended in a supermarket is an obvious and dangerous tripping hazard.

I any event, there should be nothing on the ground that anyone could trip over. Again, regular inspection and maintenance must be in place to ensure this is upheld.

Uneven surfaces can cause an obvious hazard – you could stumble over a raised paving slab section (if you managed to successfully avoid tripping over the lip it may have caused), or you could lose your balance if a section of the flooring in the shop you are walking on suddenly drops in gradient.

The gist here is that all traffic routes in premises you are entitled to visit should be free from anything that can cause you any harm whatsoever. The owners have an important duty of care to regularly inspect and maintain the premises to ensure no hazards arise. This duty extends to local councils when it comes to paths and roads (referring to potholes and paving slab defects here).

If you end up injured in an accident involving a slip or a trip, you are not alone, and you are perfectly within your rights to seek compensation for any suffering caused. At the end of the day, slip and trip accidents usually end up in broken bones and significant muscular damage – so your injuries are worth claiming for.

Feel free to get in touch for a free and friendly chat about claiming after a slip or tip accident.