There are a set of, what we Injury Lawyers call, “common road accidents” and drivers pulling out from a parked position on the side of the road in to your passing vehicle is right up there with the classics. People simply forget the most basic of driving tuition rules – mirror, signal, and manoeuvre.

It’s a lot more common for the victims to be cyclists or motorcyclists. Its far easier to spot a vehicle of the size of a car or bigger, but many will fail to spot much smaller bikers, or may check their mirrors and pull out too quickly without noting the biker in their blind spot. A driver should always take caution when moving off from a parked position; even if the road looks clear.

So who is at fault in this kind of scenario? To us, it seems fairly obvious as we have years and years of experience in dealing with road accident claims. But the law is fairly simple – if you are correctly proceeding past a parked car on the side of the road and they pull out and hit you, they should be 100% to blame. So if this has happened to you, we can help you out with a claim for compensation.
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With many “high street” beauty boutiques now offering this treatment many people have unfortunately been the victims of negligence and have consequently suffered injury that they did not envisage.

There are three main procedures that are performed when it comes to skin resurfacing/rejuvenation, these are:

• Chemical Peels
• Dermabrasion
• Laser resurfacing

All of these carry with them inherent risks which can make making a claim quite difficult as there has to be some type of negligence to proceed with a claim for compensation.  The three main things that are required are that the person should owe you a duty of care (which is implied between a medical practitioner and a patient), they must breach this duty of care, and they must have caused injury as a result of the breach. So what types of injury are caused?
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We deal with all types of accidents at work claims which can obviously be wide ranging from tripping and slipping accidents from accidents involving machinery or equipment etc. If you have sustained injury in an accident at work then you may be entitled to claim compensation.

The first point to note is that your option to make a claim is not open indefinitely. You normally have 3 years from the date of the accident to ether settle the claim or to issue court proceedings on your claim. If court proceedings are not issued within the 3 year period then you may lose your right to claim compensation. Obviously the claim may settle before the 3 year period is up. If the claim is not settled 3 years from the date of the accident then court proceedings would need to be issued – otherwise the claim becomes statute barred. This basically means that you may lose your right to claim!
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The Montreal Convention covers accidents that occur during the course of international travel by air. If you have been involved in such an accident, sustaining injury, then you may be entitled to make a compensation claim. Many of us travel by aeroplane these days and when things do go wrong and an accident occurs, a person should still have a right of action. Under the Montreal Convention a person may have a right of action if they have sustained an injury through an accident that was not their fault. Holiday excursions such as travelling by hot air balloon may also come under this convention, so travel by air is not solely specific to travel by aeroplane.

In terms of dealing with such a claim, it will be useful to consider any contractual terms and conditions which should have been issued to you at the time of booking the flight/holiday or excursion. Bookings are often made through a tour operator. Most personal injury claims run to a 3 year time limit within England / Wales jurisdiction. This means that court proceedings must be issued within 3 years of the date of the accident; otherwise you will lose your right to claim compensation. However under the Montreal Convention the time limit for bringing a claim is commonly 2 years from the date of the accident. It is said that the benefit of the convention is that it is not necessary to establish fault for the accident in order to succeed with the claim. This is known as strict liability. It is merely necessary to show that a plane accident occurred and that the passenger was injured as a result.
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Cherry pickers can be fairly dangerous if something goes wrong. Aside from the obvious working at height, there are particular hazards if your employer fails to properly equip and prepare you for using the cherry picker. So let’s look at a few examples.

One of the most common types of accidents is people crashing them. Although they can be fairly slow, it only takes one clip of something to rock the platform and you could easily fall over or knock yourself on something. So starting with this, could you make a claim for a cherry picker crash?

If the controls were in the hands of a colleague, you should have a strong case. We can allege that your employer is vicariously liable in the event a colleague’s negligence causes you injury. That’s the general rule of vicarious liability. If you are at the helm, then it could come down to training. Have you ever had training in using the picker? Did you crash it because you were unsure of the controls? In this kind of situation, the failure to train could be a path to making a compensation claim. Safety equipment, like a helmet, could be used to prevent a head injury from a fall. So we could take that in to account as well.
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We’ve been covering this a lot lately – simply down to the fact that most other law firms are now charging clients up to 25% of their compensation and asking for payment of an insurance fee. Why? Because our genius government decided that years and years of access to fair justice should be quashed in favour of insurance companies saving money. Whether this is down to how much money a lot of politicians seem to have in the insurance industry is a question in itself; but I digress.

April 1^st 2013 saw the biggest shakeup in the personal injury claiming world ever. For the first time in a long time, the innocent victims of negligence are now expected to pay to be compensated. Whilst lawyers can still recover most of their legal fees from the other side, we can now no longer recover a Success Fee and an After The Event Insurance fee.

The Success Fee is part of our fees that reflects the risk of a case. Some are riskier than others, and we can’t win them all – so we do lose money when we cannot continue a case on a No Win, No Fee basis. This Success Fee now cannot be recovered from the other side, and this is where the 25% has come in. The reason why it’s commonly 25% is because that is the maximum a lawyer can charge a client for the success Fee.
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To set the scene, I’m going to briefly explain about the legal changes that came in to force on April 1^st 2013. The gist is that for people making a claim after this date, it’s likely that their lawyer will not be able to recover all of their legal fees from the other side. Before April, all reasonable legal fees were recoverable. After April, the government banned the recovery of some of the lawyer’s fees.

The two things that can no longer be recovered are:

1. Success Fee – which is usually a percentage of our fees that helps us to fund no win, no fee claims.
2. After The Event insurance premium – insurance we take out that we can claim adverse costs or unrecoverable disbursements from.

As a result, the vast majority of law firms are now charging clients. The ‘market rate’ appears to be 25% because that’s the maximum the government have allowed a lawyer to charge a client for the unrecoverable success fee, and many law firms are also asking for payment of the insurance premium.
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We take on a lot of compensation claims for people who have tripped and fallen on steps. To be fair, they are pretty dangerous. So when can you make a claim for personal injury compensation as a result of a trip on some steps?

There has to be something wrong with the steps for you to be able to make a claim. There has to be negligence and someone has to be liable. To coin a common phrase, where there is blame, there may be a claim.

So here are a couple of examples where you may be able to make a personal injury compensation claim for tripping on dangerous steps.

Broken Steps

If steps are broken and you trip or fall as a result, whoever is responsible for the maintenance of the steps may be liable to compensate you. Whether they are liable or not could come down to what kind of notice they had about the damage, or whether they have a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance to stop a hazard arising.
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Every time I see one of these claims come in to the office, the first things that runs through my head is how common and classic these types of accidents are. General supermarket slipping accidents are of course common in general, but for some reason, grapes seem to be one of the biggest culprits of supermarket slipping accidents.

Perhaps it’s because they can easily end up falling out of a bag or out of a box, and their size is probably fairly difficult to spot on the floor. But despite its small size, they can be a horrendous slipping hazard when stepped on. You might not have thought it, but as I’ve said, we take on a lot of grape slipping claims.

The injuries can be fairly severe. Aside from the obvious broken bones from landing hard on a supermarket floor, you could easily stretch and rupture ligaments and tendons in areas like your back, ankles, or knees, which in the worst case scenarios can leave you needing surgical intervention. All because of just a grape!
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Together with roundabouts and junctions, traffic light controlled areas are up there with the most common scenes of a road traffic accident. So here are a few examples of classic crashes and a little advice about who may be at fault.

Rear End Shunt

Keep it simple to start with – when traffic slows or is stationary, rear end collisions are fairly common. If the lights change and traffic suddenly slows, it only takes one driver who isn’t concentrating as much as they should to not notice the traffic has slowed or stopped. In the vast majority of cases, the person who collided with the rear of another vehicle is at fault. The excuse that traffic slowed too suddenly isn’t normally a good enough defence!
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