Restaurants can be dangerous places to work in. Having worked in the catering industry as a student, dinner service can be a hectic and stressful time with servers and chefs rushing around to keep on top of orders and customers.

There are a number of potential health and safety hazards in general, so training and procedures are key in a restaurant to prevent people from being injured. So let’s take a look at some common examples where your employer may be liable to compensate you for your suffering and loss in the line of duty.

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Wires – an obvious tripping hazard that can cause serious injuries if a person lands hard on the ground having tripped over wires, or getting their foot caught and falling due to trailing wires. When it comes to public places in general, there is always a duty to make sure that there are no tripping hazards so there should never be trailing wires.

In an office where it is workers that are often covered by important workplace health and safety regulations, trailing wires can easy lead to an employer being liable to compensate an employee.

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It’s an easy thing to happen – especially after a stressful shopping trip or if visibility isn’t too great. But if you are correctly driving along or you are stationary and another vehicle reverses in to you from a parked space and hits you, what are your rights for making a claim for personal injury compensation?

Normally the other driver will be held fully liable for the accident by failing to keep a proper lookout when reversing. It’s similar to a driver pulling out of a junction in to a correctly proceeding car. The duty is primarily on the driver coming out of the space and in to the traffic way to manoeuvre slowly and with great care – constantly checking for pedestrians and vehicles.

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Any tripping accident can result in serious injuries – especially if you land on a hard floor. That’s why there are specific regulations that employers must abide by in order to protect their employees from being injured in the line of duty. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 have a specific section dedicated to the condition of floors and traffic routes.

This section states the following:

(3) So far as is reasonably practicable, every floor in a workplace and the surface of every traffic route in a workplace shall be kept free from obstructions and from any article or substance which may cause a person to slip, trip or fall.

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If you’re expected to lift and carry boxes and packages around the workplace, the last thing you expect is for the packaging / box to suddenly break, causing a sudden shift in weight or objects contained inside to fall out and cause you an injury.

So what if it does happen? Do you have any right to make a claim for personal injury compensation caused by the incident?

All employers do have a general duty to make sure that you’re safe in the workplace. So if they have failed to take steps to look after you, or cut corners or do things that could potentially be dangerous, you may able to claim from their insurance.

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Generally speaking, the Supply of Goods and Services Act means that both the manufacturer and the seller of a product have a duty to ensure that the product being sold is as descried, fit for purpose, and safe for use.

So what happens if you buy a set of ladders and you are injured because they are defective? Perhaps the ladders fold or collapse even when the locking system is in place? Or perhaps a rung or a section breaks and causes an accident?

If you have suffered because of a dodgy set of ladders you have bought, you may well have a claim for personal injury compensation.

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When you’re walking around a supermarket, the last thing you are probably concentrating on is the floor or your feet. I’d expect you are browsing the shelves. So it’s not hard to end up tripping and injuring yourself if there is a box, crate, or other item(s) of stock left on the ground in an aisle.

The Occupiers Liability Act puts an important duty on supermarkets to take all reasonable steps to ensure that people are not injured when in the store. Reasonable steps are normally systems of inspection and maintenance to clear away any hazards – such as stock on the ground that can be a tripping hazard.

So whether you can win a claim for personal injury compensation for tripping on a  box or item of stock on the ground is largely down to how it ended up on the floor and  / or how long it has been a hazard for.

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If another driver hits you in the back, you have an almost guaranteed claim for personal injury compensation.

For another driver to hit you in the rear, they must have either (or a combination of) been driving too fast, not leaving a safe enough distance between them and you, or not concentrating on the road ahead etc. Unless you slammed your brakes on for no good reason, the other driver should be at fault.

Whether you’re stationary in a line of traffic or at the edge of a roundabout and you have been hit, or whether you were driving along and the other driver has simply gone in to the back of you, it is likely you will end up suffering with a whiplash injury.

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For some reason, a lot of ramps can often get very slippery in wet weather, and you’d think they’d have really good grip on them given that a sloped surface could be even more of a hazard if it’s slippery.

If you are the victim of a slip on a ramp, can you make a claim for personal injury compensation? I’ll split this one in to two sections – one for accidents at work, and one for general ones when out and about.

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Petrol stations can be obvious hazards due to petrol being spilled and splashed on to the floor. Over time, even the smallest of puddles could accumulate in to a larger puddle of petrol that’s capable of being a slip hazard. Given petrol is generally clear, it’s not easy to spot spillages on the ground.

So what happens of you slip over because of spilled petrol and you end up with an injury as a result? Can you claim for personal injury compensation?

Read on for more!

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