We take on a lot of claims for people who have tripped up whilst out and about. It’s fairly common for people to ring us up and ask for our help because they have tripped over a raised drain or manhole. The injuries can be devastating – in the majority of occasions you land on a hard floor and end up fracturing something.
Because fractures are typically fairly serious, most people end up facing time off work and therefore lost earnings, a serious lack of mobility means you need lots of help around the house, and a stint of physiotherapy. It’s a serious enough situation to be in to warrant making a claim.
The big question is, as always – do you have a claim?
Claims involving raised drains and manhole covers have two major hurdles. One is identifying who is actually responsible for the cover. Just because it is on the high street doesn’t mean it’s the council or local highways authority. Some are classed as the property of the company who is responsible for it – like the water company if it’s a drain, or a power company if it’s an access way to cables or something electrical. At the same time, it may be on someone’s land – i.e. it may be on a shop front which is classed as part of the shops property, or it could be in a car park.
Because is it not always clear who has responsibly, the initial investigation timeframe for these claims can take longer than normal. We can do a land registry search to confirm who actually owns the cover or land, but on occasions companies will outsource maintenance responsibility to each other. For example, if a telecommunications company owns the manhole, they may outsource the responsibility for its upkeep to the council to do as part of the usual council inspections of the highways.
We normally start with the council and see if they accept responsibility or redirect the case. But here’s a nightmare situation that you need to be aware of – we write to the council, who tell us that the land is private and part of a car park or shop front. We write to the car park / shop owners who confirm that the manhole is the responsibility of a water company. We write to them who confirm that the manhole responsibility is outsourced to a highways agency that deal with all things relating to highway inspection and maintenance. Each time a new Defendant is involved, they have, by law, three months to investigate a claim. So if each of these companies uses their whole three months and ends up redirecting the claim, the initial investigation period could last 12 months or longer!
What’s worse is that they all may end up blaming each other! Then we need to issue court proceedings against them all and see who isn’t being truthful when we request that they serve evidence to prove they are not responsible.
The second common hurdle is whether there is a claim to answer for or not. The claim could fall within the Highways Act or the Occupiers Liability Act depending on whether its public land or private land. For each of these Acts, the responsibility is to reasonably take all steps to prevent an accident or an injury. It’s generally accepted that the definition of “reasonable steps” is having a system of inspection and maintenance in place. So if whoever is responsible can prove that they have a good system of inspection, but the defect became apparent in between inspection regimes, they can defend the claim.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably worried about making a claim now as the hurdles involved can be quite difficult to overcome! Whether you have a claim could come down to the defect itself. If the cover is raised, it could be difficult as it may well have raised in between inspection periods. But if the whole base is raised as well, it could be a design flaw if it’s raised high enough, or it could be due to the ground surrounding it breaking away in the same way a pothole is formed.
The latter statement about the surrounding ground breaking away now adds a third complication! The manhole may be the responsibility of a private company, but the surrounding land may be public land and therefore under the jurisdiction of the council!
Therefore it really is best to seek expert legal from The Injury Lawyers by giving us a call on 0800 634 75 75 and we’ll tell you honestly about the prospects of your claim for compensation!
