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Cosmetic surgery in general is a common thing for people to undertake. Breast implants in particular are very common nowadays, with prices in the region of £5,000 from the private sector. All invasive surgery carries with it potential risks, and breast implant claims come with the same risks most surgery comes with. But aside from the inherent risks, you are putting yourself in danger of suffering due to negligence.

With the PIP breast implant scandal still ongoing, we learned a great deal about just how unregulated the cosmetic surgery industry is here in the UK. A total of around 40,000 women in the UK alone are thought to have received the implants privately, which were filled with none medical grade standard silicon and are likely to rupture. Apparently, for almost a decade nobody knew that the PIP Company were putting people’s lives in danger.

So when you go for cosmetic surgery, there are serious risks and unknowns that you should always consider. How do you know that the implants you are being given are safe? How do you know that your surgeon is going to do a good job? Given the poor regulation in the industry, at present, you don’t. So what happens when things go wrong?
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We take on a lot of claims involving accidents in and around swimming pools. The combination of water and a hard surface can usually lead to people suffering some potentially serious injuries. Fractures are extremely common in these sorts of circumstances.

So if you do have an accident involving a swimming pool, can you claim, and who is responsible?

Generally speaking these claims fall within the realm of the Occupiers Liability Act. This stipulates that the occupier of a premises has an underlying duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent injury from occurring on the premises they are in control of. So if it is a swimming pool in a leisure centre, then the owners of the leisure centre have the responsibility. If it’s in a hotel, then the hotel owners have the responsibility.

Slipping is an obvious hazard. It’s difficult to control this kind of thing given that water is bound to end up on the floor nearby a pool. Normally signs will be deployed to warn people of the danger of slipping and to warn people never to run. Mats could be used between doorways (say between the changing rooms and the pool area) to also help combat the problem. If you slip over in a swimming pool , whether you have a claim or not boils down to whether the owners can prove they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent the accident. To win a claim, we still must prove negligence and breach of law.
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Given how difficult it is to secure a mortgage in this tremendous credit crunch we’ve been suffering from for what feels like an eternity, a lot of people nowadays, particularly the younger generations, are renting. Granted, when you think about it, it’s kind of a waste of money as your hard earned cash isn’t being invested in anything. But there are a few bonuses to the renting game.

When you rent, the responsibility for a lot of factors to do with the property fall on your landlord. Whilst it is probably part of the agreed terms in your contract that you are responsible for the upkeep of furniture and certain fittings, things like utilities comes down to your landlord (aside from paying for them!)

This means that there is a duty on your landlord to PAT test any portable electrical items that come as part of the agreed let, and sockets, fuses, generators, and anything else electrical related falls within their responsibility. It’s prudent for your landlord to therefore have a system of inspection and maintenance in place. This can be a simple callout on a regular enough basis for an electrician to come out and inspect the premises.
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Tens of thousands of UK residents choose to have cosmetic surgery every year. The industry is fairly unregulated, as we came to understand from the PIP breast augmentation scandal from 2012. Each year thousands of people end up turning to lawyers because they want to make a claim for compensation for cosmetic surgery gone wrong.

In this article, we’re going to talk about nose surgery (rhinoplasty) compensation claims.

I can understand why some people may want to have a nose job. The nose is one of the most prominent parts of the face, and ultimately an ugly or badly distinguished nose can literally transform a good looking person in to a not so good looking person. It seems obvious that the end result is not always what people are after; cast your memory back to Michael Jackson’s nose, or take a look at Lil’ Kim’s.  But with any cosmetic surgery procedure, things can so easily go wrong.

Here are some classic examples of problems that can be caused by cosmetic surgery negligence:
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We live in a world where appearance is everything. We also live in a world where science and medicine have developed to such an extent that suffering from even the most severe injuries can still lead to surgeons putting you in a position with a fairly good quality of life (I’ve had my knee pretty much entirely reconstructed; rewind a hundred years ago, I’d have had it amputated!)

So when you combine the need for looking great with the technology we have today, cosmetic surgery is now increasingly popular amongst anyone with enough of a disposable income to afford it. It is now so readily available that it isn’t just the celebs that are having work doesn’t to look as good as possible. In fact, many people take out loans or use credit to be able to afford cosmetic surgery.
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In recent years, the number of horror stories about the quality of nursing home and nursing care workers has been explosive. I’ve seen loads of TV programs and read loads of articles about nursing care staff who just don’t seem to care at all about the patients, and even staff stealing and mistreating those in need of the care.

It’s a scary thought – especially for anyone with friends or relatives in a care home.

As a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers, we deal with all sorts of different claims for compensation. We represent victims for compensation against the NHS or private care homes if the care provided is inadequate or negligent. Common examples are failing to properly care for people, such as neglecting basic food, water, and sanitation needs, which can cause a range of health complications to already vulnerable people. Another example could be failing to properly medicate residents, which could lead to existing health problems getting worse.
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For employers, adhering to manual handling regulations is one of the most important things they need to get right. It is so easy to injure your back by using poor lifting techniques or because routes and lifts are not properly risk assessed by employers. There is a significant duty on employers to make sure that their employees are adequate trained and the lifting exercise is risk assessed to take in to account the weight and size of the load, the amount of people needed to assist, the use of mechanical assistance, and the safety of the journey (to name a few common factors!)

As a law firm specialising in accident at work claims, I can tell you that despite the strict rules and regulations in place, employers are still cutting corners and getting it wrong. If you’re reading this I assume it’s because you have injured yourself at work due to manual handling. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to go in to manual handling alone.

So, as I said earlier, your employer has a duty to risk assess any manual handling activity. If you are going to be instructed to lift something on your own, your employer needs to be confident that:
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Is there anyone on this Earth that enjoys going to the dentist? Really there isn’t anything enjoyable about it, and I get that people hate seeing medical professionals as we are worried about what they’re going to do to us; but going to the dentist is particularly one of those things that people tend to be frightened of. The sound of the drills as you walk through the halls and the waiting rooms…

As specialist injury lawyers we deal with all varieties of personal injury claims. We represent victims for dental surgery negligence, so here’s a little advice about compensation claims for dental negligence.

Firstly, to make a claim, we have to prove that the dentist has provided you with poor or incorrect treatment or an inadequate level of care. This is not always easy to do, as there are a lot of complications surrounding treatment provided by dentists that are not so easy to avoid. Infections are very common, and they are generally accepted as an inherent risk of a dental procedure. If you get an infection after a procedure, it isn’t very easy to make a successful claim given they are often an inherent risk.
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We place our trust in the medical professionals we seek help from to do their best to keep us well. Nowadays there are thousands of conditions and problems that are treated by medication; from the simple drugs like paracetamol to the all important chemotherapy for cancer victims. But what happens when the medication we are given goes wrong? What happens if there is an error made?

Commonly the scenarios are the following:

• You are prescribed the incorrect medication for the problem by a doctor.
• You are given the wrong medication by the pharmacist.
• You were not warned of potential side effects, or not enough investigation was done in to conditions you have or other factors personal to you that could cause an adverse affect (e.g. certain medication could harm during pregnancy).

A medical professional has a duty to properly investigate your symptoms to make sure you are prescribed the right medication. If you are given medication which exacerbates the problem or does not help the problem, you may have a claim if you can prove that the judgment made by the professional was below standard. If other professionals could confirm that they would have treated you in a different way, and that the judgment made by the original professional was poor, there may be a case to answer for. We can normally establish this with expert reports from consultants we instruct as part of your personal injury claim.
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I’m pretty certain that there is no one on this Earth that relishes the thought of going to A+E. I’ve been a few of times, and it’s the same old story – they’re rushed off their feet, it takes hours just to be seen by a nurse, let alone a doctor, and they’ll probably going to discharge you and tell you that you’ll be absolutely fine and its nothing to worry about. Four days later you’re lying on an operating table because that “minor muscular injury” they convinced you that you’d be recovered in no time from is a complex fracture!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at NHS staff – I think we can all appreciate that the NHS is stretched so very thin, and the nursing staff and emergency care teams are, I imagine, fighting one heck of an uphill battle! It isn’t their fault that things are so bad in the economy that we’re all suffering at the mercy of an underfunded public health system. But irrelevant of whether you’re blaming our dear government or the powers that be in the NHS, one thing remains; standards of care cannot fall below what is expected.
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