Accidents in supermarkets are one of the most common types of accidents we see as personal injury lawyers. I suppose we can all see why this is the case. Supermarkets can be extremely busy places – the sheer volume of people coming through the doors, the sheer amount of products, the numbers of staff – accidents are bound to occur. We have come across a wide range of supermarket accidents including accidents involving roll cages, accidents caused by spillages, accidents caused by items falling off shelves etc.

Accidents at supermarkets come under the scope of occupier’s liability. Basically the supermarket owes you (as a lawful visitor) a duty of care. This is a duty to keep you safe and free from harm while you are on their premises. This duty means that the store must be kept safe to prevent visitors from sustaining injury. If a spillage occurs on the floor then this clearly poses a slipping hazard. A wet floor sign should be erected and the spillage should be cleaned up as quickly as possible. Of course other factors are important such as whether the wet floor sign was clearly visible, if erected at all at the time of the accident, the time between the spillage and the clean-up operation etc.
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In a personal injury compensation claim you can claim for your injury (general damages) and you can claim for any losses that you have incurred as a result of the accident/injury (special damages). Special damages cover a wide range of losses from loss of earnings, treatment fees, care and assistance, damaged items etc. In this blog we will look at a claim for loss of earnings.

You can claim for lost earnings if you sustained injury in an accident which was not your fault and if, as a result of your injuries, you have taken time off work and therefore lost earnings. Depending on your contract of employment, you may be off work and still receive pay in full. If this was to happen then you cannot claim lost earnings as there has been no loss. If you are not paid during your absence then you are entitled to claim for lost earnings. There is no guarantee that the other side will meet this claim, although it is much stronger if you can provide proof of the loss. This can be done by producing wage slips, showing the drop in earnings, or perhaps bank statements etc. If your wage is not “set” (i.e. you receive a different amount of money from your employer each month) then we would calculate your loss based on an average; perhaps looking at your pay slips from the previous 3 to 6 months before the accident.
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You’ve tripped over a damn pothole on the highways, and ended up injured as a result. I expect you’re pretty angry, especially if you are now off work and losing earnings, or in pain and / or immobile due to the injuries. I expect you’ve had a few rants about the council and how they need to step up to the mark and sort out this pothole problem! But when it comes to action against the council, what are your rights, and what should you do?

Under the Highways Act, there is a potential claim to answer for. You may have a case against the council or whoever is responsible for the highways. So will your claim win? Well let me explain the law for you – because claims against the council can actually be very hard to win.

The duty by law that the highways authority have is to reasonably inspect and maintain their jurisdiction of highway. This is normally accomplished with an inspection regime – a road may be inspected every three months if it’s a well used busy area, or perhaps every 12 months if it’s a minor country road.
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I’ve been driving for seven years now, and like to think that I am not only a confident and competent driver, I also stick to the advice my instructor gave me all those years ago. I’m of the opinion it’s better to be as safe as possible; so whilst “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” is the correct way of doing things, I tend to keep my eye on the mirror and check the blind spots to make sure I’m safe when changing lanes.

But there are still too many people out there who fail to follow the basic principle of “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” – which is why accidents involving people changing lanes are common; especially on roundabouts. So what’s the law when it comes to drivers changing lanes and causing an accident?
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Because we are a trusted firm of injury experts who represent thousands of compensation victims throughout the UK, we are often the first point of call for advice after suffering injuries in an accident. When it comes to whiplash, one of the most common things that people say is this:

“At the time, I felt fine. But then a few days later, I started feeling pain”

This is actually extremely common for whiplash injuries. In fact, the majority of people will not normally feel the pain right away. It either starts to make itself known the next day or a few days later. Most people, other than being a little shaken up after the accident, feel physically fine.
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So you are the cruel victim of what may seem like a terrible slapstick joke – you’ve tripped over and you’ve injured yourself, and whilst your dignity may heal in a matter of hours, your physical injuries may not be so easy to get rid of. Tripping and landing hard on the ground can cause some serious injuries like fractures, ligament tears and ruptures from stretching and twisting, and back injuries from twisting or being thrown to the ground violently.

So if you have tripped over and you want to make a claim, how do you go about it? If you tripped because of someone else’s negligence, you may be able to make a successful personal injury claim. For example, if you tripped due to a pothole or defect in the street, or tripped over an unattended box in a supermarket, or tripped over a loose cable in the office – if you think someone is at fault, we can tell you if we think you can claim.
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Dislocating your shoulder can be serious and painful. If you are reading this having recently suffered from a dislocated shoulder, I assume I’m preaching to the choir; unless you’re Chris Ryan. If the injury was caused through someone else’s negligence, you may be able to make a claim for personal injury compensation.

So what can you do, and how can our expert injury team here at the injury lawyers help you?

Well we are an expert injury law firm so we will fight tooth and nail to get you the highest payout possible. Injuries for dislocated shoulders can be as high as £13,700 according to official guidelines.  These sorts of injuries can be painful, debilitating, and require a lengthy period of rehabilitation.

So let’s look at what our service can do for you:
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The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 exist to put a duty on employers to look after the health and safety of their employees; with the ultimate goal being to avoid injuries at work. One of the most commonly applicable regulations is that of the above, as this places the duty on your employer to make sure that all traffic routes in the workplace are safe to navigate.

Regulation 12.—(1) states that “Every floor in a workplace and the surface of every traffic route in a workplace shall be of a construction such that the floor or surface of the traffic route is suitable for the purpose for which it is used.”  Stairs at work fall within the category of traffic routes – and given that falling down a set of stairs can cause serious injury as you may be falling from a height, the regulations are even more important to abide by.

Slips on Stairs

A slip will normally be caused due to a spillage of some nature, or perhaps a leak, or perhaps from a colleague or hired cleaner mopping the stairs. For your employer to abide by the regulations above, slipping hazards need to be prevented as much as possible – so when it comes to spillages, a system of inspection and maintenance should be used to identify any hazards and rectify them immediately. If your employer fails to have such a system, they may be liable for compensation.
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Here’s a little advice about the ins and outs of a rear end shunt claim for compensation.

Generally speaking, you have a very strong claim for compensation if you are hit in the back by another driver. Being hit in the back indicates that the other driver failed to stop in time, which means they failed to react in enough time and were possibly driving too fast or not keeping a safe enough distance.

So if you are injured because someone went in to the back of you, you pretty much have a guaranteed claim for compensation. There is very rarely a good defence that the other driver could raise in these circumstances. Unless you slammed the brakes on because you are fraudulently trying to make a claim, or unless you slammed on to avoid hitting anything smaller than an average sized dog (except for a child) like a squirrel, there isn’t much of a defence they could raise.
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We have done a lot of articles on pothole claims over the years, and we have represented countless victims for claims against the council after tripping and falling due to potholes on the highway. These claims are inherently difficult to win. The reason for this is that those responsible for an area of land have a special defence under Section 58 of the Highways Act, which is:

 (1)In an action against a highway authority in respect of damage resulting from their failure to maintain a highway maintainable at the public expense it is a defence (without prejudice to any other defence or the application of the law relating to contributory negligence) to prove that the authority had taken such care as in all the circumstances was reasonably required to secure that the part of the highway to which the action relates was not dangerous for traffic.
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