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If you have sustained injury at work then you may be able to make a claim for compensation. Perhaps you sustained injury due to faulty equipment in the workplace as this is a fairly common scenario.

Following the enactment of the Use of Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1992 your employer is under a duty to ensure that equipment, machinery and vehicles that you use at work are suitable for their intended use. There is also a duty to ensure safety and maintenance. Further, there is a duty to make sure that the equipment, machinery or vehicle, is only used by people (staff) who have received adequate training and instruction. The equipment, machinery or vehicle must also be accompanied by suitable safety measure. The safety measures could be protective devices, markings, warning signs etc.

Your employer should ensure that equipment, machinery and vehicles are regularly checked and maintained. If an employee notices a fault then they should notify a manager or supervisor as soon as possible. However the ultimate duty is on the employer and hence regular inspections and maintenance procedure should be carried out.
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Pre-action protocols were introduced for a number of reasons. The main reason was to speed up the claims process by providing guidelines as to when insurers should respond to a claim. Most personal injury claims come under a certain protocol, all of which differ slightly.

Road traffic accidents now come under the road traffic accident protocol, industrial disease claims (e.g. industrial deafness, vibration whiter finger etc) come under the disease and illness protocol and most other personal injury claims (e.g. work accidents, trips/slips etc) come under the more general personal injury protocol. Note that road traffic accidents differ slightly in the sense that a claim can “fall out” of the road traffic accident protocol. This is because road traffic accident claims are submitted through an online portal and should insurers fail to respond to the claim in time (within 15 business days) then the claim falls out of the road traffic accident protocol and continues under the more general personal injury protocol. This means that different time frames are then in operation. This also has cost consequences as Solicitors are only entitled to recover fixed costs for claims dealt with on the online portal under the road traffic accident protocol.
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Most industry workers will be aware of the term PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment. In many jobs PPE is required in order to keep workers safe and free from injury or harm. Without adequate PPE injuries are more likely to occur and this ultimately can cost a company a lot of money in dealing with personal injury claims. There is a duty on employers to keep employees reasonably safe and free from harm. One method of protecting employees from harm is providing them with adequate PPE.

PPE can be in many different forms from hard hats, steel toe cap boots, overalls, high-visibility vests, goggles, gloves, ear muffs etc. Each item of PPE is designed to protect employees from hazards in the workplace. Workers who use potentially dangerous chemicals as part of their job (such as employees of pharmaceutical companies) should be provided with adequate eye protection. Equally people who work in the steel industry should be provided with adequate hearing protection and people who work on building sites should be provided with hard hats, high visibility vests and potentially other protection such as hearing protection.
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Most people want to know at the outset of a claim how much compensation they are likely to recover. While this question is understandable to ask, Solicitors cannot give you a value with any great certainty at the outset of your claim. To understand why this is the case, you need to look at how claims are valued. In law, another term for value is quantum. When a claim is initiated your injuries are more likely to be still ongoing rather than resolved, unless there was some delay between the accident and you bringing a claim for compensation.

Either way, to value a claim we rely upon medical evidence. We arrange for you to be examined and assessed by a suitably qualified and experienced medical professional. The type of expert that examines you will depend on the nature of your injuries. You may be examined by a General Practitioner Expert, an Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon, an Orthopaedic Expert, a Psychologist, etc.
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If you sustain injury on someone else’s premises or land, then you may be entitled to recover compensation.  This is because occupiers of premises or land are under a duty to take reasonable care for those using the premises or land. This area of law is commonly governed by the Occupiers Liability Act 1957 (which deals with accidents involving lawful visitors) and the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 (which deals with accidents involving trespassers).

An “occupier” of premises or land is someone who is in control of that premises or land. This could be control of a supermarket, a shop, a warehouse, a car park, etc. The occupier could be an individual, a company, a local council or a partnership. If there is an argument or disagreement as to whether or not someone is an occupier, the Courts look at the judgement in Wheat v Lacon [1966] which noted that a person is an occupier if he has a sufficient degree of control over premises that he ought to realise that any failure on his part to use care may result in injury to a person lawfully there. The Occupiers Liability Act also notes that occupiers must be prepared for children to be less careful than adults. This means that if a child does something a little bit silly, such as eating poisonous berries in a park, sustaining injury, then liability could be established – this was the facts in the case of Glasgow v Taylor [1922].
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Hearing deteriorates with age and this is something that we cannot avoid. As we get older it is likely that we will require hearing aids. When people start to lose their hearing it is natural and automatic to put the deficiency down to age. However if you worked in an environment with excessive noise levels, have you considered that you may be suffering from industrial deafness/noise induced hearing loss?

The fact of the matter is that many people are not aware that they are suffering from industrial deafness. They notice a hearing deficiency and automatically assume this is due to the natural ageing process.

If you were exposed to excessive noise at work then it is likely that you will have developed industrial deafness/noise induced hearing loss. You may not notice a hearing problem at the time of the exposure to excessive noise. This is normal. What happens is the noise levels damage your hearing but you only notice the hearing loss when you get older and age associated hearing loss adds to the noise induced hearing loss. By having a hearing test, an Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon may be able to advise you if you have any hearing loss which is due to noise exposure.
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Many people rely on public transport to get around and the most common kind of public transport is the bus networks. Most of us live within close proximity to bus stops unless you live in a rural area. If you get on a bus and sustain injury, whether that injury be caused by defective items on the bus or by the driver’s negligence, then you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the bus company to keep passengers safe and free from harm. A bus company is liable for the acts of its employees acting in the course of their employment. Therefore if a bus driver is negligent and causes an injury, a claim can be brought against the bus company.

If you sustain injury on a bus as a result of a broken chair, then chances are you are entitled to recover compensation. It is the responsibility of the owner of the bus (the bus company) to ensure that the bus is reasonably safe. Any defect on the bus should be rectified to prevent injury from occurring. If there is a defect on a bus then the defect should be rectified before the bus is put into service. You’d normally expect a bus to be inspected at least once  day.
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To people who do not work in law, contributory negligence may be a challenging term to explain. Basically contributory negligence is an element of blame or fault. It is probably best explained by use of examples. Contributory negligence is important as it can greatly affect the compensation that you are entitled to.

The example I will use is actually for a work accident claim situation; but commonly this is something that is applied to motorcyclists or cyclists who do not wear a helmet. Essentially the same rule of thumb below can apply to motorcyclists / cyclists not wearing a helmet as well.

Say you are injured in an accident at work whereby a piece of metal falls from a ledge and hits you on the head. It is later discovered that this piece of metal should not have been left where it was. It should not have been left in a position whereby it could fall and injure and employee. However at the time of the accident you were not wearing your safety hat that had been provided by your employer, despite being in an area where it is compulsory to wear the safety hat. In this situation, you may be entitled to recover compensation but it is likely that you will be partly at fault (partly contributory negligent).
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It’s fairly safe to say that in this modern age of consumerism and convenience shopping that we all have a local supermarket and whether you enjoy your weekly shop or have to be dragged down the aisles kicking and screaming they are pretty much unavoidable.

But what if your shopping trip is more than mundane? What if something terrible should happen and you get injured whilst in the supermarket? What happens then?

Well like most occupiers of premises, supermarkets have responsibilities to the people that enter and use them. This means that if you are in the middle of your shopping trip and have an accident which causes you an injury then you could have a claim.

You might wonder what the worst thing that could possibly happen is. Well, the most common type of accidents in supermarkets are slips and trips but that’s not to say that other dangers don’t await you. Unseen liquids leaking on to the floor, uncovered stands for displays sticking out in to aisles and even the humble grape has been the downfall of the casual shopper.
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Tripping up is something that can happen almost anywhere, even if sometimes it may be a trip over our own feet rather than over a dangerously placed object. Most claims for tripping up arise out of trips out and about in a public place. Most trips occur outside in the high street and are caused by raised paving slabs, uncovered manholes, potholes etc…

If you trip and sustain injury in a public place then a claim would be made against the owner of the land in question. In terms of public places, the owner of the land would ordinarily be the local council. With private property such as in a shop or on a shop forecourt, the shop itself would be liable. This is because the owners of the land in question are under a duty to keep the land reasonably safe.

If you trip and sustain injury at work then you may be entitled to bring a claim against your employer. This may differ in circumstances where you are a contractor working on another company’s premises for example.  In such a scenario a claim would most likely be brought against the company who owned the premises in which you were working. As with all tripping claims the court will look at various facts such as whether there was any warning of the danger, what precautions were taken, how long was the hazard left unattended etc…
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