It’s a nightmare – you’ve gone abroad and ended up coming down with food poisoning! It can easily happen, especially in countries where hygiene standards are not as good as ours. On top of that, food and water compositions are different and that can have an effect on our digestive systems as well.
If you do come down with food poisoning on holiday, can you make a claim? It’s all circumstantial to be honest…
Firstly, food poisoning normally doesn’t last a long time. Most people will only suffer for just a few days. Whilst those few days are painful to cope with, making a claim with a lawyer can be difficult. Circumstance-wise, if you can prove the food poisoning was caused by a place you were saying at, for example, you have good prospects for a claim. But unless the claim is worth in excess of £1,000.00, a lawyer will struggle to act on a No Win, No Fee basis as £1,000.00 is the minimum amount that allows a solicitor to recover their legal fees from the other side. So, whilst you might have a good claim, it may be classed as a “small claims matter” which you would need to seek compensation through a small claims court in the majority of cases.
If, however, the poisoning is serious and lasts for weeks, you should have no trouble finding a lawyer. But there are a few other things to take in to account:
Where the incident happened is important. If it happened in the UK, you should be fine, as the claim should be covered under UK legal jurisdiction. If it was abroad, you may struggle to make a claim. If the establishment that gave you the poisoning was booked in the UK as part of a package, you may be able to claim against the package provider under the Package Holidays and Package Tours Regulations 1992. This way, you can make a negligence claim against the package provider within the jurisdiction of the UK, which makes it far easier to claim the compensation you lawfully deserve.
If, however, the incident happened abroad and could not be covered under any form of UK jurisdiction, you may need to get a solicitor with experience in dealing with the jurisdiction of the country it occurred in, or you may need to get a solicitor from the actual country it occurred in. Laws can vary significantly from country to country – just because you could have a claim in the UK doesn’t mean you have the same right to claim in a foreign country.
If the poisoning occurred in the air or on the sea, it could fall within the UK jurisdiction if the airline or the boat company is British, and therefore bound by British law and jurisdictions.
Ultimately, this can be a complicated area of law, so the best thing to do if you have been suffering for more than four – six weeks is to contact a specialist personal injury lawyer for advice as to whether you can make a claim or not.
Feel free to give our claims line a call on 0800 634 75 75 for friendly, no obligation, legal advice.
