If you have been injured after tripping over a raised manhole or drain / grate cover, you may be entitled to make a claim for personal injury compensation.
Perhaps the cover was loose and had raised up, or was defective and a lip has been created. Either way, if it is not properly flush with the ground and it’s an obvious tripping hazard, there is a duty on whoever is responsible to take reasonable steps to prevent this from happening.
So what are your chances of winning a case?
The Law
The law in this area can actually be quite hard to overcome. The duty is for those responsible to take all reasonable steps to prevent an injury from occurring. But there are a number of other ways that there may be little or no duty whatsoever to even inspect the area unless a problem has been reported.
If it’s a part of public land, the local highways authority may inspect the area as part of their own inspection regimes which occur at intervals that reflect how busy an area is. For example, a pathway in a city centre may be inspected every one to three months. But a country road may only be inspected every 12 months.
However, if the local authority doesn’t review the cover as part of their inspections, whoever is responsible for the area may do it themselves. If so, they may not inspect it often, or at all, unless someone reports a problems.
If a problem has been reported, they must act quickly to rectify the problem or cordon off the area.
However, if the area is on private land, there may be hardly any inspection at all unless some reports a problem.
As such, unless the company or body responsible for the manhole or area is actually aware of a problem before the accident, it may be very difficult to win a claim.
So what should I do?
Contact us to make a claim anyway because we work on a full No Win, No Fee basis so there is no harm at all in getting a case set up and submitted to the other side. As it happens, early liability admissions are encouraged as the system allows for the other side to pay less fees if they accept liability for a claim early. So for minor injury cases, they may just admit liability as it could avoid lengthy legal costs if we fight them and turn the decision around.
It’s also a fairly quick process to get a claim set up and the other side normally only has less than 8 weeks to respond with a liability decision.
We also offer 100% compensation agreements for this type of claim, so call us now on 0800 634 7575 for help and advice.