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There are a lot of rules and regulations in place that employees must abide by to ensure that their employees are not injured during the course of their employment. These regulations range from general health and safety at work, use of equipment at work, personal protective equipment at work, manual handling at work, and much more.

Whilst we have a good array of rules and regulations in place to protect employees, there are still high volumes of compensation claims that we deal with here that we often cannot understand how the employer has allowed it to happen. Simple things are missed, and employers fall foul of not taking health and safety in the workplace seriously enough to ensure people are not hurt at work.

Take for example a supermarket, that employs people to use delivery cages to distribute stock on to the shelves from the delivery lorries. The cages are work equipment, and must be regularly inspected and maintained by the employer to ensure they are safe to use. Staff should know to report any issues or difficulties in using them t prevent anyone from coming to harm. It’s simple enough to do, right? Why then does John Smith end up injured because the shelf on the cage he was using was being propped up by a surplus box of crisps and collapses as he innocently tried to remove the box to place it on a shelf? How has the employer allowed the cage to be in such disrepair that staff are using boxes to prop up shelves; and why weren’t staff more vigilant to report those kinds of problems? Normally because the employer isn’t doing enough to ensure it doesn’t happen.
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Depending on the type of industry you work in, workplaces can be very dangerous. If you work with machinery or plant equipment for example, the potential dangers involved are numerous. For this reason, health and safety rules and regulations for the use of machinery and equipment at work are numerous.

If you work with machinery and equipment, your employer is responsible for training you as well as supervision of its use; and inspecting and maintaining machinery and equipment to ensure that it is continually safe to use. Machinery and equipment must be safe to use at all times – so appropriate guards, rails, or emergency stop buttons should be in place at all times to ensure no one is harmed through the use of the equipment.

If you are injured at work due to machinery and equipment, you may be covered for compensation with your employers insurance if the accident was caused through no fault of your own. Unfortunately, injuries involving machinery and equipment can be often significant – so you need to make sure you have a specialist personal injury lawyer representing you for your claim for compensation.
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For a man who is responsible for looking after our new clients in a busy, leading, personal injury law firm, as well as writing informative articles for you folks to digest, you may not have thought I’d be the sort of guy who has done my fair share of work up on a scaffold rig!

A fair few years back, as a recent graduate in an economic meltdown, I did a little light renovating work for a family friend that involved scaffolding to reach the high ceilings in a former swimming hall being turned in to a modern dance studio. It was good work – I enjoyed getting my hands dirty – but as a former rock climber as well, with a little instructing experience, my knowledge of dangers at height is pretty good!

This hands on experience combined with my hands on legal knowledge allows me to write a nice little blog about scaffolding injuries and whether you can claim compensation for them.
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I can’t tell you how many cases we deal with that relate to what people might call “stereotypical accidents” – the main one of course being slipping on a wet floor! But this type of accident can caused injuries that can be very painful and debilitating, not to mention to extremely embarrassing and panic worthy.

These claims are mainly associated with poorly maintained floors, such as staff mopping the floor with excess amounts of water, or failing to put down wet floor signs, or just plain old spillages. The most common places for accidents like this to occur are usually supermarkets, the workplace, or any public building. There is a legal obligation to have warnings of when such hazards are present, such as wet floor signs that should be shown to make people walking near the hazard aware of any danger.

A lot of people wonder if you can really claim for slipping on a wet floor, as it’s mainly associated with tongue in cheek humor – but YOU CAN! The majority of cases such as those in supermarkets and other public building can be claimed under Occupiers Liability Act. This law is supposed to ensure that the owner or proprietor ensures to keep their property a safe environment for the public.
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Whiplash: what is it? We have all heard about it but do you know exactly what it is? You hear people expressing that whiplash isn’t really an injury and that making a whiplash claim is a scandal – they are totally wrong. People who have been involved in road traffic accidents can be injured and it can be more than a 24 hour bug. 

Whiplash is much more than what it is portrayed in the media and it can seriously affect people’s lives – I should know, I deal with whiplash claims every day. I hear clients complain about the pain and suffering it causes them as well as the effect it has on their day to day life – it is certainly much more than a slight niggle!

So what exactly is whiplash? Whiplash is a term used to describe a neck, shoulder and back injury resulting from being involved in a car accident. The sudden movement of the body, particularly, the neck, damages the ligaments and tendons in the neck. The force of the sudden movement makes your body move beyond its normal range of movement so that ligaments, tendons and muscles in your neck area are overstretched. To let you know, tendons are tough, fibrous bands that connect muscles to the bone and ligaments are the fibrous connective tissues that link two bones together at a joint.
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Elbow Injuries can cause significant problems; everyday tasks can be made extremely difficult to do yourself. There are commonly two types of elbow injuries – traumatic injuries caused as a result of an accident or singular instance, and repetitive strain injuries caused by damaging continuous elbow joint motion.

The most common traumatic injuries we see from accidents normally involve slipping on a wet floor, tripping on a hazard, or falling from a height. These accidents can cause impact injuries to your elbow, particularly as your instincts tell you to put out your hands to stop your fall which can cause the damage to the elbow, or just landing on the elbow can cause severe damage. The most common injuries we see here for claims are fractures, dislocation, or nerve damage.

The most common repetitive strain injuries are incurred as result of sport related injuries – for example tendinitis, or more commonly known as tennis elbow, which is normally caused when the elbow joint is overused.
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For a variety of reasons, some people are more nervous or afraid of roundabouts than others.  This can cause accidents as we at The Injury Lawyers are only too aware. 

If you have been involved in a roundabout accident and have sustained an injury as a result, depending on the circumstances, you may be entitled to compensation. 

Here’s some quick advice if you were thinking of making a claim.
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Read this to save yourself some money! Like, 30% of your payout!

Unfortunately (or rather fortunately perhaps for you!), we do not deal with claims for miss sold PPI – HOWEVER, there is a very good reason as to why we don’t. For anyone who has had a claim or who has considered a claim, you may well know that a solicitor or claims company dealing with the case will be taking a percentage of your payout because they are unable to recover fees back from the other side.

So you do not receive 100% of your PPI compensation payout. According to some research we have looked at, as much as 30% will go to the solicitors or claims company running these cases on their No Win, No Fee agreements.
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Giving advice to people who were injured as a passenger in an accident is normally very simple.  You almost certainly have a claim for compensation.  A passenger would have to do something extreme and unusual to have been at fault for the accident they were involved in – and no matter who was at fault for the accident, as long as it wasn’t them, they are entitled to compensation for their injuries.

Types of passenger claims where you can be compensated:

• You are in a car and the driver loses control and goes off road, causing you injuries
• You are in a car which is involved in a collision with another vehicle
• You are on a bus which for no reason slams on its brakes throwing you out of your seat (perhaps the driver wasn’t concentrating and only saw the red traffic lights at last minute)

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At The Injury Lawyers we are frequently asked about how much a claim is worth.  Thing is, everyone’s claim is different because no-one has the exact same symptoms and those symptoms do not last the same amount of time in every case.  For this reason, at the very start of your claim, we cannot give you an exact valuation, it is simply impossible no matter what anyone else may tell you.  That said, we can explain how whiplash claims are valued and value your claim at a later stage. 

Here’s how:

At The Injury Lawyers we are expert whiplash lawyers having dealt with thousands of whiplash claims over many years.  In fact, not a day goes by without one of our busy team progressing a whiplash claim towards settlement.  Due to this experience, we are able to give you a rough idea as to how much your claim may be worth. 
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