We’ve been covering this a lot lately – simply down to the fact that most other law firms are now charging clients up to 25% of their compensation and asking for payment of an insurance fee. Why? Because our genius government decided that years and years of access to fair justice should be quashed in favour of insurance companies saving money. Whether this is down to how much money a lot of politicians seem to have in the insurance industry is a question in itself; but I digress.

April 1^st 2013 saw the biggest shakeup in the personal injury claiming world ever. For the first time in a long time, the innocent victims of negligence are now expected to pay to be compensated. Whilst lawyers can still recover most of their legal fees from the other side, we can now no longer recover a Success Fee and an After The Event Insurance fee.

The Success Fee is part of our fees that reflects the risk of a case. Some are riskier than others, and we can’t win them all – so we do lose money when we cannot continue a case on a No Win, No Fee basis. This Success Fee now cannot be recovered from the other side, and this is where the 25% has come in. The reason why it’s commonly 25% is because that is the maximum a lawyer can charge a client for the success Fee.
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To set the scene, I’m going to briefly explain about the legal changes that came in to force on April 1^st 2013. The gist is that for people making a claim after this date, it’s likely that their lawyer will not be able to recover all of their legal fees from the other side. Before April, all reasonable legal fees were recoverable. After April, the government banned the recovery of some of the lawyer’s fees.

The two things that can no longer be recovered are:

1. Success Fee – which is usually a percentage of our fees that helps us to fund no win, no fee claims.
2. After The Event insurance premium – insurance we take out that we can claim adverse costs or unrecoverable disbursements from.

As a result, the vast majority of law firms are now charging clients. The ‘market rate’ appears to be 25% because that’s the maximum the government have allowed a lawyer to charge a client for the unrecoverable success fee, and many law firms are also asking for payment of the insurance premium.
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We take on a lot of compensation claims for people who have tripped and fallen on steps. To be fair, they are pretty dangerous. So when can you make a claim for personal injury compensation as a result of a trip on some steps?

There has to be something wrong with the steps for you to be able to make a claim. There has to be negligence and someone has to be liable. To coin a common phrase, where there is blame, there may be a claim.

So here are a couple of examples where you may be able to make a personal injury compensation claim for tripping on dangerous steps.

Broken Steps

If steps are broken and you trip or fall as a result, whoever is responsible for the maintenance of the steps may be liable to compensate you. Whether they are liable or not could come down to what kind of notice they had about the damage, or whether they have a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance to stop a hazard arising.
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Every time I see one of these claims come in to the office, the first things that runs through my head is how common and classic these types of accidents are. General supermarket slipping accidents are of course common in general, but for some reason, grapes seem to be one of the biggest culprits of supermarket slipping accidents.

Perhaps it’s because they can easily end up falling out of a bag or out of a box, and their size is probably fairly difficult to spot on the floor. But despite its small size, they can be a horrendous slipping hazard when stepped on. You might not have thought it, but as I’ve said, we take on a lot of grape slipping claims.

The injuries can be fairly severe. Aside from the obvious broken bones from landing hard on a supermarket floor, you could easily stretch and rupture ligaments and tendons in areas like your back, ankles, or knees, which in the worst case scenarios can leave you needing surgical intervention. All because of just a grape!
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Together with roundabouts and junctions, traffic light controlled areas are up there with the most common scenes of a road traffic accident. So here are a few examples of classic crashes and a little advice about who may be at fault.

Rear End Shunt

Keep it simple to start with – when traffic slows or is stationary, rear end collisions are fairly common. If the lights change and traffic suddenly slows, it only takes one driver who isn’t concentrating as much as they should to not notice the traffic has slowed or stopped. In the vast majority of cases, the person who collided with the rear of another vehicle is at fault. The excuse that traffic slowed too suddenly isn’t normally a good enough defence!
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Cosmetic surgery is becoming more and more popular as the industry has shifted and now caters for everyone and not just the rich and the famous. Prices seem quite steep from what I’ve seen, but they are far from unaffordable if you want the look of your dreams.

But the big question that many people ask is this – how safe is cosmetic surgery?

Any surgery, particularly invasive surgery, carries numerous potential side effects and risks. Risks of infection are probably the most common ones, and infections alone can lead to all sorts of complications. But inherent risks aside, how safe is it when you put your life and body in the hands of a surgeon for money? How qualified are they to do the procedure?
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Store rooms can be fairly dangerous places if employers fail to follow basic health and safety regulations. The most common types of store room accidents are usually caused by the room being too full or dangerously organised (or not organised at all) which normally causes trips, slips from spillages, and accidents involving working at height with ladders or steps.

Employers have an important general duty to make sure that all areas of the workplace are safe to navigate; so when it comes to a stock room being organised and not overfilled, we can apply The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. These state that all traffic routes shall be safe to navigate. So if you fall because you can’t properly get round a stockroom as it’s too full, you may have a claim for compensation.

If you trip because stock is on the floor when it shouldn’t be, you may also have a claim. Commonly this comes down to one of two things – either poor organisation on your employers part meaning you could apply the above regulations again, or something called vicarious liability.
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We deal with all types of accidents at work which can obviously be wide ranging from tripping and slipping accidents from accidents involving machinery or equipment etc. If you have sustained injury in an accident at work then you may be entitled to claim compensation.

The first point to note is that your option to make a claim is not open indefinitely. You normally have 3 years from the date of the accident to either settle the claim or to issue court proceedings on your claim. If court proceedings are not issued within the 3 year period then you may lose your right to claim compensation. Obviously the claim may settle before the 3 year period is up. If the claim is not settled 3 years from the date of the accident then court proceedings would need to be issued – otherwise the claim becomes statute barred. This basically means that you may lose your right to claim!
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One bit of loose carpet can be a serious issue if someone trips on it or slips because it isn’t gripping the floor. Tripping or slipping can be bad enough if you fall down to the floor fast and hard, but what about carpets on stairs? You take a fall down a flight of stairs and you can end up with serious injuries.

So is there a law or a duty when it comes to loose carpets? It depends on where it happens, but given its likely it will be in a place of work or in a public place, here is the info you need to know:

Loose Carpet at Work

Regulation 12 (2) (a) states:

The floor, or surface of the traffic route, shall have no hole or slope, or be uneven or slippery so as, in each case, to expose any person to a risk to his health or safety.
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Chest injuries can actually be a lot more painful than most people think. If you overstretch the muscles in the chest, it can actually leave you in a considerable amount of agony, restrict your movement, and may even result in time off work. You can normally tell if a chest injury is soft tissue related because it hurts to move or breathe – sometimes even shallow breathing may be painful. But before I go on, if you need advice about chest pain, speak to the NHS immediately because chest pains can be a whole host of serious problems.

Chest injuries are common in slips and trips if the muscles are overstretched as you fall, and they are also common in road accidents. A lot of people get soft tissue injuries on the chest due to seatbelts. This is of course much better than being thrown through a window of course.

Chest injuries that are muscular can also take a long time to subside as well. So you could face a number of weeks or even months in pain. I find that its best to keep moving as this can help the pain symptoms. But always consult a doctor!
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