Road Traffic Accidents (RTA’s) are normally quite straight forward in respect of assessing liability and fault for the accident – so claims for personal injury resulting from these accidents are usually also straight forward.

As with any claim the main issue is deciding who was at fault for the accident. In road traffic accidents claims, due to the amount of rules and regulations, traffic signs and road markings which determine how we should drive on the roads, liability is usually easy to resolve.

The most common and successful type of personal injury claims resulting from RTA’s are rear end shunts and pulling out of a side road.
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Getting into a vehicle that you know is stolen is never a good idea and will likely end up in an accident – and if the police catch up, it is likely to involve being arrested as well.

So what does the law state about being a passenger in a stolen vehicle and being injured as a result of an accident:

“no court will lend its aid to a man who founds his cause of action upon an immoral or illegal act”

In layman’s terms, this means that as you are involved in an illegal act by getting into a vehicle knowing it was stolen, then you may be unable to make a claim for compensation if you are injured as a result of this illegal act. This is known as the “ex turpi causa” rule.
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Many people think that accidents at work only happen on construction sites because of the heavy machinery and dangerous nature of that work. However, accidents also occur in the office environment, something which when compared to a building site seems relatively safe.

One of the major hazards in an office can be slips and trips. If you work in an office and look around it there are potentially a lot of hazards. For example, wires that have not be directed properly, over stacked files which could potentially fall, drawers left open, bags and briefcases not stored properly are all common hazards that may seem unimportant but can potentially cause serious accidents.

So how do you bring a claim for work office accident? Like any other personal injury claim you would have to establish that your employers have been negligent. For example: if they have not ensured that wires are correctly stored and you consequently trip on them they can be considered to have not provided a safe place of work.
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Compensation is based upon the severity of your injuries and how long the injuries will affect your everyday life. As such, there is not really such a thing as a “standard” payout for any particular injury as everyone can be affected differently.

In law the defendant has to take the claimant as they find them – for example if your injury is an exacerbation of an existing injury this doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to claim as, of-course, if it wasn’t for the injury, your condition would not have been aggravated!

So how is a payout assessed? Well, put simply a payout is always assessed on the particular facts of each individual case. There is no such thing as one payout for this injury and another for something else – each case will have its own individual payout.
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A recent report has been commissioned by the Royal Mail which has concluded that the laws to protect postal workers from dog attacks is inadequate.  According to the report, further laws need to be created to deal with the owners of dogs which attack postal workers while delivering mail.

According to the commissioned report, around 3,000 postal works a year are subject to attacks by dogs when on their rounds. These attacks can be brutal and in certain circumstances ruin people’s lives. As a result of the commissioned report it has come to light of a postal worker who was attacked in Sheffield by two Staffordshire Bullterriers and has been left with visual and mental scars and is now disabled as a result of the attack.

This commissioned report has called for the Government to introduce immediate changes to the law which will help protect postal workers. One of the proposals from the Royal Mail is to suspend deliveries to addresses where there is a threat to a postal worker from being attacked. This pressure has also been increased due to recent changes to the law on dog attacks in Scotland, Northern Ireland and soon to be introduced in Wales, leaving England the only part not to take action.
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As a man who used to spend his time climbing rocks faces as a hobby, both indoor and outdoor, and having previously worked at height for a refurbishing job a few years back, I’m no stranger to the danger involved and the measures people need to take place to ensure you don’t end up falling from a height.

It only takes one slip, trip, or stumble when up high somewhere to end up careering down a height and facing the potential of a serious injury. It’s an obvious statement that falling from a height can end up in serious damage and even fatalities. So when it comes to working at height as part of the role, the responsibility, as always, falls largely on your employer.

Your employer must take all reasonable steps to ensure that you are safe when working at height. If you are working with ladders, you should be properly trained and provided with the right type of ladders for the job you are doing. If the job requires someone to be at the base of the ladders to stabilise them, then this should always be the case. You should be fully fit to use the ladders, and the ladders should be in a condition to allow the job to be done safely. So if the ladders were to collapse due to disrepair, or fall because they were the wrong type of ladders for the job, or if they were not suitably stabilised, you may have a claim against your employer.
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Up and down the country on a daily basis people sit down to work – it is perhaps taken for granted that you sit down at your desk or at your work station in whichever job you do and start your daily jobs. However, we also take it for granted that, whilst we are sat at work, we are relatively safe from being injured, we are less likely to trip over a colleague’s bag or a trailing wire for a start. But what if the cause of our injury is the very chair that you sit on every day?

You may think it is unlikely to happen but more and more people are being injured as a result of chairs at work collapsing or breaking when they are being sat on. The question is; what can you do about it?

Well, it is your employer’s responsibility under section 2, Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to provide you with adequate equipment to allow you to do your job and to keep you safe from hazards that they are able to prevent. Therefore, if you do a job that requires sitting at a desk your employer should provide you with a chair that allows you to do this safely.

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Although it is never a good idea to get in a vehicle when the driver has been drinking, if you have been injured as a passenger in a vehicle which is being driven by a drunk driver, it does not mean that you cannot make a claim for personal injury. However, getting into a vehicle when you know the driver is drunk or has been drinking, can affect your claim.

The normal guideline is that, as a passenger, you are an innocent party and cannot be at fault for the accident. This therefore entitles you to receive 100% of any compensation that is awarded. But this changes if you willingly get into the vehicle when you know the driver is drunk.

Contributory negligence for passengers in this situation will almost certainly be claimed by the other side. This is when you have in some way contributed to the injuries sustained in an accident. In this case it means that you have knowingly put yourself at risk from injury by getting into a vehicle with a drunk driver.

In a personal injury claim, the percentage that a passenger would be held liable for their own injuries in these circumstances is on average around 25%, more or less the same for not wearing a seatbelt.
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You may have been told by your Solicitor that he or she is preparing to make a pre-action disclosure application (or PAD for short). This is basically an application to Court to request that the Court makes an Order to force the other party to disclose relevant documentation in accordance with the claim. Relevant documentation could include insurance details, works medical records, risk assessments, accident book entries etc. The relevant documentation will depend on the nature of the claim. Without such documentation it could be difficult for your Solicitor to assess your claim or the prospects of success in your claim. The documentation could be crucial in determining liability.

The application will usually result in a formal hearing at a County Court. You normally do not need to attend the hearing and we often instruct a Barrister to attend the hearing on our behalf. The hearing would usually last between 10 and 15 minutes. We prepare the application and produce a “draft order” which sets out the documentation that we believe should be disclosed. We also prepare a Statement setting out the correspondence between the parties to show that we have reasonably tried to get the information from the Defendant without the need for court action.
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This is a phrase that is batted around A LOT – so it is important to understand the difference between firms and make sure that you instruct the best lawyer for you.

So to begin with, what is a No Win No Fee?

This means that you should not have to pay the fees to run your case if the claim doesn’t win! You should receive 100% of the compensation awarded to if you win as the legal fees for most injury claims are recovered from the defendant.

So what should you now look for in an Injury Lawyer to make sure they’re the best? Here are a few examples.

1. Communication
2. Expertise
3. Accessiblity
4. Friendly

This is a very basic checklist however there is a lot more too each heading and here at The Injury Lawyers we pride ourselves on ensuring we have focused individually on each one and ensure you as the client get the best service level possible!
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