Accidents in warehouses, where forklift trucks are common, are fairly frequent and we deal with quite a large volume of claims for personal injury compensation from employers insurance after an accident at work. When it comes to forklift truck accidents, one of the most common ones is getting your foot run over by a colleague. It can be easily done.

So if you have had your foot run over by a colleague at work because they were not paying attention or were perhaps travelling too fast, what are your rights for making a personal injury compensation claim? Are you covered, and what can you claim for?

You have a good claim

First things first, prospects wise you have a fairly decent chance at winning the claim. If a colleague is negligent and causes an injury to a co-worker, you can make a claim from your employers insurance under the scope of vicarious liability. Vicarious liability simply means that the negligence of a co-worker falls on your employer. So you don’t need to worry about suing your mate at work because your employers insurance will cover you.
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As soon as you start your new job, the duty of care that your employer owes to all of their employees starts immediately. There is no honeymoon period or anything like that – the duty starts from the first second you start working for them. This fact can lead to a lot of accidents at work.

The duty is on your employer to ensure that any task you are requested to do will be able to be carried out in a safe way. So if the task at hand requires you to be trained, your employer is responsible for the training. Let’s look at a few examples:

Manual Handling – if you are instructed to undertake any manual handling activities and your new employer has not yet trained you, if you sustain injury because of the lack of training, you may have a claim for compensation against them.
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Most accidents that occur on or after 31^st July 2013 will be pursued under a new protocol that differs significantly to the traditional way of pursuing these claims to put them more in line with the Road Traffic Accident Protocol system. Essentially, most claims against employers or in public places like shops, restaurants, or out on the highway will now be pursued using a portal system similar to that of road accidents.

So what does this mean for people wanting to make a claim for personal injury compensation?

Well the idea behind the system is that claims are settled much quicker without the need for lengthy litigation and without the need for solicitor costs for letters and telephone calls. The whole portal system means that information is shared between parties electronically. In line with this system, legal fees that law firms receive have been dramatically, and I mean dramatically, cut. In fact, the fees we receive now could potentially lead to poor levels of service from many firms (not us! Read on for more info!)
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Most law firms are now charging up to 25% for you to make a claim for an accident at work. This is due to recent legal fee changes that mean lawyers can no longer recover all of their legal fees from the other side.

Before the changes in April, things were a lot more straight forward – lawyers could recover all legal fees from the other side, so most people get 100% of their payout. But since the changes, the recovery of two things have been abolished. One is called a Success Fee, and the other is called an After The Event insurance premium.

The 25% is normally to cover the success fee – and 25% is common because this is the maximum a lawyer can take from a client for the Success Fee. On top of that, a lot of law firms are also asking for payment of the unrecoverable insurance as well.
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Many people at some time in their life have been around stock cages. Anyone who has worked in retail whilst doing their studies, or as a career, will be used to using them on a daily basis. Most places I have worked at and most people I know who have worked with them all suggest the same thing – they can be fairly dangerous pieces of equipment!

Your employer has an important duty to look after your wellbeing, and they therefore have a duty to ensure that you must adhere to a safe system of work. If an unsafe system of work is adopted, and you are injured as a result, there may be a claim for compensation to answer for. When it comes to dangerously stacked stock cages, it commonly comes down to one of a few scenarios:
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Some people are under the impression that the famous No Win, No Fee has been abolished. This isn’t true; but I will explain why some people may be under the impression that it has been stopped.

April 2013 saw the biggest shakeup in years of the personal injury world as the recoverability of certain legal fees has been stopped. This means that most law firms are no longer offering 100% compensation. Before the changes, most law firms for the majority of cases had 100% agreements because lawyers were entitled to recover all reasonable fees directly from the other side.  Since the changes, this is no longer the case.

From April 2013, any agreements entered in to mean that the lawyer for the majority of cases cannot recover a Success Fee of an After The Event insurance premium. The Success Fee is part of our costs that helps us to fund No Win, No Fee claims – as we cannot win them all. The insurance premium (abbreviation ATE) is to protect you against having to pay for certain costs, like the opponents costs if something goes south for example.
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When we are out and about in the street, at shopping centres, at the park etc, we are generally on property owned by others. The owner could be the council or local authority, equally a pavement in front of a shop may be owned by the shop itself. As a firm of Solicitors we can ascertain who owns a piece of land. This is often straight forward as we can submit a search with the land registry. It can become quite technical trying to figure out boundary lines in the real world.

However in the most part a land registry search will inform us who owns the land in question. We can then submit a claim to the correct party or local authority. The owner of the land in question (the street, the shopping centre, the car park etc) is responsible for making sure that the land is reasonably safe and free from defects. The owner is responsible for maintaining their land. If you sustain injury because of a defect on someone else’s property or land, then you have a right to claim compensation. This comes under the term “occupier’s liability” if the land is privately owned, or the “Highways Act” if it’s public / Council land.
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Weight loss surgery has undoubtedly become increasingly popular in the recent years as many people either give up on the diet and exercise or simply feel that these options have not done anything for them in previous attempts to lose wight. However, although often advertised by celebrities who basically brag about how good they now feel and how nice they look in a bikini, the surgery is not one that should be undertaken lightly. At the end of the day, it is incredibly invasive and can result in serious injuries, including death, if there is some form of negligence.

Now of course, the majority of these surgeries happen without a glitch; but if something goes wrong due to the negligence of a medical practitioner, what happens then?
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We see many different types of work accidents, from tripping accidents, accidents involving harmful substances, lifting/carrying accidents, accidents involving equipment or machinery etc. If you have sustained injury because there were no guards on a machine which you were using, then at face value it is likely that you have a genuine claim. Machinery should be safe and this means it should be regularly checked and maintained. If a guard has come off of a machine and has not been replaced, it is more dangerous and injury is foreseeable.

Modern machinery often have guards to prevent injury to hands. Indeed even on equipment you use in the garden such as hedge trimmers, there are guards in which your hands should not go beyond. With works machinery, we could be talking about large industrial machines so the potential injury could be very serious. If you catch you hand in a machine, we could be looking at loss of fingers or loss of the hand. The potential injury and potential effect on a victim’s life is significant.
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Slips and Trips are common on a night out, usually caused by spilt drink, broken glass or loose carpets, which lead to both minor and major injuries.

Nightclubs and bars are obviously open to the public, and therefore give permission to the customers to be on the premises. As a result of this, a club or bar owe a duty of care to all its customers and therefore must ensure all reasonable steps have been taken to remove or minimise all potential hazards.

A busy nightclub or bar should have procedures in place to ensure that premises are kept safe. Any bar should have an inspection and cleaning procedure in place to ensure that premises are cleaned regularly, and that no spillages or breakages are left to become a hazard.
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