Toilets are prime locations for slipping accidents and people making a claim for personal injury compensation having being injured in an accident. As you can imagine, water (and perhaps other liquids!) are spilled on the floor and can naturally result in a person slipping and falling.
So if this has happened to you, what are your rights for making a claim for personal injury compensation?
In general, the Occupiers Liability Act applies for public places which puts a duty on those in control of a premises to take all reasonable steps to prevent in injury from happening. Reasonable steps when it comes to preventing slipping hazards normally comes down to a system of inspection and maintenance. As such, the toilet should be inspected at regular intervals to ensure that any spillages are cleared away and liquid is not allowed to accumulate.
You may have noticed that most toilets do have systems of inspection and these are publicly displayed. A lot of this is down to hygiene and public confidence reasons, but it serves to watch out for spillages as well and make sure they are cleared away. There are also wet floor signs as toilets are naturally places where the floor is likely to be wet.
Both of the above can be classed as reasonable steps, so when it comes to these sorts of claims, they can unfortunately be difficult to win. However, the process for these types of claims changed drastically last year and as such it’s always worth submitting a claim because the other side is encouraged to admit liability for minor cases. The reason for this is that the cost in legal fees is way higher if they dispute liability and we manage to get the decision turned around.
So if you have slipped, irrelevant of whether you can see they have a system in place or not, get in touch for help and advice. All we need to do is submit a Claim Notification Form to the other side, and they normally have 40 working days to investigate the claim. They must either accept or deny liability within this timeframe.
If the claim wins, we will allow you to keep 100% of your compensation even though other lawyers will want to take 25% from your payout due to recent law changes. We also offer a full No Win, No Fee service as well.