If you’re in a shop or a supermarket, or any other public place, if you get your foot caught on something sticky on the ground, it can easily cause an accident and an injury. Perhaps standing on some spilled product in a shop could suddenly cause your foot to stick and result in you losing balance and falling to the ground, or perhaps twisting your knee.
If this has happened to you, you may be entitled to make a claim for personal injury compensation.
The Law
For most public places, the law that generally applies is the Occupiers Liability Act. This important law puts a duty on whoever is responsible for the premises to take all reasonable steps to ensure a person is not injured.
Spillages can of course easily happen, so to win a claim, we would need to prove that not enough was done to try and prevent an incident like this. Common examples could be the place having:
- Regular systems of inspection to clear away hazards
- Staff being trained to look out for such hazards and clear them away or cordon them off as soon as possible.
If this happens at your place of work, there is a specific law for it covered under The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. This also puts a duty on your employer to take reasonable steps to prevent an injury in the same way the owner of a premises should do for a visitor.
What should you do?
If you are injured because of something that has got your foot caught on the ground, you should report it as soon as possible to a member of staff (or a supervisor or manager if it’s at work). It’s wise to start a claim as soon as possible because there may be valuable CCTV footage that could show how long a hazard has been there for, and as such whether those responsible have adhered to the duty they have to do by law.
It isn’t easy to win this kind of claim, because if they do have a system of inspection and they can prove it is reasonable and has been kept to, they can defend the claim. So starting a claim early can give you the best possible chance to win a claim as footage is normally only kept for a few short weeks before being erased.
It’s also a good idea to get medical help as soon as possible as well.
100% Compensation
For this type of claim, we can offer a full 100% compensation agreement and No Win, No Fee service. Most other lawyers will want to take up to 25% from your claim due to law changes in April 2013, but we still let our clients keep all of their payout and we recover what legal fees we can from the other side.
