Coming in to contact with oil can do some serious damage to the skin. If you have ever been in contact with hot oil, I’m sure you’ll know what I mean. So if this happens to you in the workplace, are you entitled to make a claim for compensation? If you contact our legal team we’ll take a look at the duty your employer has and see if we can make a claim for you.
Common Scenarios
These cases commonly involve kitchen environments, although we have seen some from working in garages or in factories from oil leaks. However, the majority oil burn accidents often involve fast food outlets like McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, etc when employees are injured using deep fat fryers.
You can easily come in to contact with hot oil in a kitchen environment in several ways:
- Colleagues causing an incident through their own negligence
- Baskets falling in to oil vats due to them not being secured properly
- Oil spitting from vats
- Oil leaks
When can you claim
To win a oil burn accident claim, we do need to prove that your employer is negligent and has breached their health and safety duties. This can be achieved in several ways.
Firstly, if a colleague was the cause of the accident, your employer may be vicariously liable which means they can end up being automatically liable to compensate you. The general principle is that the negligence of a colleague is the responsibility of the employer, so if a colleague has splashed oil on you accidentally, as an example, you may have a good claim.
You can claim when it’s a training issue too. It might sound daft to some people, but if you’re not trained and instructed in how to perform such tasks involving dangerous liquids like oil and you end up injuring yourself due to a lack of training, you may be able to win a claim. You could, for example, not know how to properly secure a basket which causes it to drop in and splash oil on you.
If the equipment is defective or unsuitable and that’s the underlying cause of coming in to contact with the oil, you employer may be in breach of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations. These say that your employer has a duty to ensure that equipment is not defective or unsuitable.
The provision of gloves is a common one too; because oil can of course easily splash and come in to contact with you in general use. If you need gloves and they are not supplied, your employer may be in breach of The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations which say that your employer is responsible to provide equipment to protect you where necessary.
What should you do?
Call us 0800 634 7575 about making a claim for workplace compensation. We can normally advise you within a few minutes if we think you have a case or not, and for most workplace accidents, we can normally investigate it further on a no win, no fee basis.
It really is easy to initiate a claim most of the time, and you’re protected by law when making a claim too.
