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Plenty of us now are sitting down in chairs at work. We trust we’re safe of course – it’s not normal for a chair just to collapse… is it?

In a workplace situation, if your chair collapses for reasons beyond your control, you may well have a good claim for compensation. Your chair is classed as your work equipment, and there are specific regulations in place that state that any defective work equipment that causes you an injury leaves your employer liable.

Even if the reason the chair became defective was totally out of your employers’ control, we can allege the defective work equipment rule and in theory the insurers should be strictly liable to compensate you. As long as it wasn’t you who was responsible for breaking the chair – say you jumped up and down on it or loosened a screw or something.
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Many people, particular in supermarkets and warehouses, use roll cages. It’s an everyday piece of equipment needed for moving stock around the premises – so they’re pretty useful! Having worked with them in the past, they don’t half get battered around sometimes! In fact, we see a lot of claims for compensation caused by roll cages at work.
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Rules and regulations that employers have to abide by when it comes to manual handling activities in the course of your employment are strict and numerous. There’s a very good and rather obvious reasons for this; manual handling injuries tend to affect the back. Your back is of course one of the most important parts of the body, so injuring it can be considerably debilitating.

Whilst manual handling comes in to almost everybody’s role in some way, it applies to others far more in certain occupations. It applies minimally for me as I’m an office worker, lifting only boxes of paper or files on the odd occasion.

But a plumber, or a mechanic, or anyone on a constructions site or in a warehouse, are going to be doing a lot of lifting as part of their role. As such, proper manual handling training and risk assessments should be done by your employer to comply with the law!
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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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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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Vicarious liability for a work accident compensation claim essentially means that you have been injured due to the negligence of a colleague. If you are injured due to the negligence of a colleague, in UK law, your employer is vicariously can be found liable which means they have the duty (normally through their insurers) to compensate you. So for example : if your co-worker, let’s call him “Jim”, runs in to you whilst driving a forklift truck because he wasn’t looking where he was going, fear not; you don’t have to sue “Jim” personally! In this situation, the claim can be brought against your employer.

Employers Liability Insurance covers vicarious liability claims.

Claims that fall within the realm of vicarious liability usually have pretty high success rates. Here are a few examples of cases where your employer can be vicariously liable (aside from the forklift one above):
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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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Most people would agree that the industrial work place can be a fairly dangerous place to be and that everything possible should be done to keep people who work in this type of environment as safe as possible. One way in which this is done is through the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), this is any equipment (including clothing) that should be worn or used by a person at work to protect them against risks to his health and safety.

If you work in an environment where there are risks to your health and safety then your employer will usually need to provide you with some form of PPE, in fact there are regulations in place that make it a legal requirement for them to provide this type of protection to their employees. These regulations are called The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992. While many people may see Regulations as another layer of red-tape to add to what should be good old-fashioned common sense it should be a comfort to know that as an employee you have a legal right to be provided with PPE while at work.
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With personal injury claims you can recover compensation for General Damages for the pain and suffering and you can also recover Special Damages for any losses incurred as a result of the accident.

An example of Special Damage is loss of earnings.

Say for example you sustain injury, whether it be at work or in a road traffic accident, and as a result of your injuries you may have to take time off work and subsequently you may have lost earnings. As part of a Special Damages claim you can try and recover the lost earnings. As with most aspects of Special Damages you should obtain wage slips as you’ll have to prove those earnings lost due to your injury.
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With the introduction of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 it is fair to say that the majority of employers have taken action and introduced manual handling training to their employees. However, it seems that there are still certain sectors of employment where statistics show more could be done by the employer to prevent injury when moving obstacles within the employment.

In social care, moving patients, equipment and supplies or waste is a significant part of a daily routine. Subsequently around 2,000 injuries are reported each year in social care work which has occurred from manual handling. Over 50% of the injuries reported involving lifting and manoeuvring patients. The statistics of how many injuries occur in social care may be alarming to some especially with the introduction of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992.

Under the Regulation 4 Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 your employer owes you a duty to reduce the risk of injury to employees when a task involves manual handling. By reducing the risk it can involve avoiding the handling all together where reasonably practice, putting in measures in place to avoid injury to individuals and other employees and to assess the risks when manual handling cannot be avoided.
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