A case that proves the importance of proof!
Certainly not the easiest of claims to win – Our client stepped on an abandoned packet of fruit sweets left on the floor of the shopping mall she worked at resulting in a fractured elbow and ongoing shoulder problems.
As you can expect, these kinds of cases are very hard to win – but when you have The Injury Lawyers fighting your corner for the case, we’ll take it all the way if we think we can beat our opponent!
The initial Defendant we pursued was the company responsible for the mall, but the company who were contracted to provide cleaning services were ultimately the settling party. Both strenuously denied liability citing that the mall operates a system of cleaning and inspection to watch out for hazards like the one our client fell on.
The duty in law, known as The Occupiers Liability Act, says that reasonable steps must be taken to prevent slipping and tripping hazards. Having a system of cleaning and inspection would be classed as a reasonable step; so on the face value of things it appears that, in this case, reasonable steps were taken.
But it’s one thing to allege you have taken reasonable steps and it is an entirely different thing to prove it! Despite these types of cases always being extremely difficult to win given that the law is heavily on the side of the Occupier, we fought them for a payout!
As a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers we have access to the best legal services on offer. After careful speculation of their defence and evidence provided, it was clear that there was no evidence to show that they had completed their inspections on the day of the accident. Whilst they had provided us with cleaning schedules, signing in sheets for cleaners, and job sheets with time allocations, there was nothing to show what, if anything, had actually been done on the actual day our client was injured.
It was clear that we would need to issue Court proceedings and obtain all the evidence we needed to take this case through the Court system and we did just that. The case was handled within our specialist litigation department who exchanged evidence with the solicitors for the two Defendants. We maintained all along that we were not satisfied at the lack of evidence to show that the cleaners performed their duties on the day of the accident.
The closer a case moves toward trial, the better chance there is to settle it. Court can be an unpredictable state of affairs where a claim could swing either way based on who the Judge is on the day of the trial. We always put our opponents under pressure by making time limited settlement offers with cost consequences in the later stages of the litigation process.
This tactic of course was successful – whist the initial offer wasn’t accepted, our client was happy to accept a counter offer from the solicitors acting for the cleaning company. In summary, we managed to settle a difficult case where there were clear risks in taking it to trial. Our argument that there was no evidence for cleaning and inspection on the actual day would be very difficult to hold in a Court of law. Whilst the point we made is right on the mark, Judges tend to favour the opponents in these kinds of cases and it could easily have gone the other way.
The moral of the case is simple though – if you fight your clients’ corners like we do we can obtain a settlement in the most difficult of cases.
