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A woman fell to her death from a zip wire while on a gap year in Namibia, after an instructed failed to undertake safety checks.

Sally Whitcomb, 32, plunged 23 feet and was pronounced dead at the scene. She was on a training day organised by expedition charity Raleigh International. At the inquest in to the death, the instructor was described as having a complacent attitude towards safety.
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This will all depend on the facts of your case, however, in the vast majority of cases this is not necessary. In fact most cases (the massive majority) settle without Court Proceedings ever being issued.

Even where proceedings are necessary, we find that it may well be that once solicitors are instructed to defend the claim that they take a view that they do not have a strong enough defence to the claim and therefore advise the Defendant that they should immediately settle the injury claim before further costs are clocked up; thus even where proceedings are issued we find most of these cases then settle shortly thereafter.

It is simply not in the Defendant’s interests to run a case to a final hearing, especially if they do not feel they have very good prospects of successfully defending the claim.

A school in Lincolnshire has been fined £19,000 for ignoring safety procedures, leaving a 16 year old girl with terrible burns to her hands and the loss of all but two of her fingers.

According to The Times, the girl was attempting to make a sculpture of her own hands during an art lesson using a plaster of Paris mould, and having submerged her hands in to the wet clay, the mould began to heat up and set due to a chemical reaction, the Boston Magistrates Court was told.
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Almost half of new school buildings do not have fire safety sprinkler systems in place, according to new findings. 43% of schools built or refurbished in the governments Building Schools for the future programme are without the sprinklers. These figures are in spite of government guidance issued 2 years ago that almost all new schools should be fitted with sprinkler systems.

The worry regarding this comes from another surprising statistic. Every week 20 schools are destroyed or damaged by fire.

The Chief Fire Officers Association says local authorities who choose not to fit sprinklers are putting the safety of pupils and staff at risk.
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What do you expect when you speak to your lawyer, not just for the very first time but every time you speak to them in relation to your claim?

Some would say rude, abrupt and even arrogant but is this really what you should expect and more to the more to the point, what you should stand for?

In short…No! So, what should you expect from your lawyer and their telephone manner?
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More than 5,700 patients in England died or suffered serious harm over a sixth month period due to errors. According to the BBC, statistics gathered by the National Patient Safety Agency (or NSPA) indicated that 459,500 health mistakes were made last year. These figures cover incidents involving hospitals, GPs and mental health units.

Amongst the most commonly recorded mistakes were patient accidents, followed by mistakes during treatment and with medication. The figures put forward are only on a provided on a voluntary basis which unfortunately indicates that the real figure regarding the number of mistakes made may be much, much higher.
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A hernia is most likely to be the caused when you are involved in a heavy lifting activity. A hernia is due to a weakness in body tissues which allows other bodily tissues to protrude through; this often includes an organ of the body such as an intestine. Your tissues are normally strong enough to contain the organs and stop them from pushing through.
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Two-thirds of chickens on sale in the UK are carrying a bacterium which can cause food poisoning. According to the BBC, the birds carry the bacteria known as campylobacter, which can cause diarrhoea and abdominal pain. The bacterium is responsible for 55,000 cases of food poisoning annually in the UK.

Worryingly, there has been little evidence of an effective way to stop the spread of the bacterium among birds, however, minimising of contact between the birds at slaughter does seem to reduce the risk of infection.
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Following a head injury we are all familiar with concussion and the affects it can have but what are the more serious consequences of a severe head trauma? One of the life altering consequences could be epilepsy which can be caused by trauma which has caused part of the brain tissue to be damaged. This is often the result of a very serious road traffic accident, a fall down a flight of stairs or more serious criminal offences such as a serious strike wound to the head.
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One of the most common injuries that we encounter at the Injury Lawyers is caused by employers not providing instructions on how to handle heavy or awkward objects. The relevant legislation in England and Wales is the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992.

First of all an employer needs to consider whether these regulations may be relevant to them, the question to be asked is whether the employer has manual handling as part of their operation. If so then a risk assessment should be conducted by the employer and, if there is a possibility that the rules might apply, then consideration of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations should be put in place.
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