There are a lot of rules and regulations in place that employees must abide by to ensure that their employees are not injured during the course of their employment. These regulations range from general health and safety at work, use of equipment at work, personal protective equipment at work, manual handling at work, and much more.

Whilst we have a good array of rules and regulations in place to protect employees, there are still high volumes of compensation claims that we deal with here that we often cannot understand how the employer has allowed it to happen. Simple things are missed, and employers fall foul of not taking health and safety in the workplace seriously enough to ensure people are not hurt at work.

Take for example a supermarket, that employs people to use delivery cages to distribute stock on to the shelves from the delivery lorries. The cages are work equipment, and must be regularly inspected and maintained by the employer to ensure they are safe to use. Staff should know to report any issues or difficulties in using them t prevent anyone from coming to harm. It’s simple enough to do, right? Why then does John Smith end up injured because the shelf on the cage he was using was being propped up by a surplus box of crisps and collapses as he innocently tried to remove the box to place it on a shelf? How has the employer allowed the cage to be in such disrepair that staff are using boxes to prop up shelves; and why weren’t staff more vigilant to report those kinds of problems? Normally because the employer isn’t doing enough to ensure it doesn’t happen.
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Depending on the type of industry you work in, workplaces can be very dangerous. If you work with machinery or plant equipment for example, the potential dangers involved are numerous. For this reason, health and safety rules and regulations for the use of machinery and equipment at work are numerous.

If you work with machinery and equipment, your employer is responsible for training you as well as supervision of its use; and inspecting and maintaining machinery and equipment to ensure that it is continually safe to use. Machinery and equipment must be safe to use at all times – so appropriate guards, rails, or emergency stop buttons should be in place at all times to ensure no one is harmed through the use of the equipment.

If you are injured at work due to machinery and equipment, you may be covered for compensation with your employers insurance if the accident was caused through no fault of your own. Unfortunately, injuries involving machinery and equipment can be often significant – so you need to make sure you have a specialist personal injury lawyer representing you for your claim for compensation.
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For a man who is responsible for looking after our new clients in a busy, leading, personal injury law firm, as well as writing informative articles for you folks to digest, you may not have thought I’d be the sort of guy who has done my fair share of work up on a scaffold rig!

A fair few years back, as a recent graduate in an economic meltdown, I did a little light renovating work for a family friend that involved scaffolding to reach the high ceilings in a former swimming hall being turned in to a modern dance studio. It was good work – I enjoyed getting my hands dirty – but as a former rock climber as well, with a little instructing experience, my knowledge of dangers at height is pretty good!

This hands on experience combined with my hands on legal knowledge allows me to write a nice little blog about scaffolding injuries and whether you can claim compensation for them.
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I can’t tell you how many cases we deal with that relate to what people might call “stereotypical accidents” – the main one of course being slipping on a wet floor! But this type of accident can caused injuries that can be very painful and debilitating, not to mention to extremely embarrassing and panic worthy.

These claims are mainly associated with poorly maintained floors, such as staff mopping the floor with excess amounts of water, or failing to put down wet floor signs, or just plain old spillages. The most common places for accidents like this to occur are usually supermarkets, the workplace, or any public building. There is a legal obligation to have warnings of when such hazards are present, such as wet floor signs that should be shown to make people walking near the hazard aware of any danger.

A lot of people wonder if you can really claim for slipping on a wet floor, as it’s mainly associated with tongue in cheek humor – but YOU CAN! The majority of cases such as those in supermarkets and other public building can be claimed under Occupiers Liability Act. This law is supposed to ensure that the owner or proprietor ensures to keep their property a safe environment for the public.
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Any bodily injury can be a pain to live with. Certain injuries will always be more of an inconvenience to people than others – for example, as is the topic of this article, foot injuries.

If you injure your foot, you are likely to end up with considerable issues walking around. Your mobility is restricted, meaning your independence is compromised and your quality of life can be seriously reduced. Just imagine trying to get upstairs to use the bathroom or go to bed when you can’t actually walk right – Sounds painful; all of them stairs. Imagine trying to prepare a meal whilst hopping around the kitchen, complete with steak knife in one hand and your sirloin sizzling in the oil on the gas hob – sounds rather dangerous, doesn’t it?

Normally people who end up with a foot injury that causes any difficulty walking will require some form of care and assistance from a householder, friend or relative. So there is that to take in to account, on top of the fact that commuting to work may be made somewhat difficult if you can’t drive with the injury to the foot.
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Roundabouts: I personally hate them and they can often terrify me. You never know who has thinks they have right of way, when a vehicle is actually going to go, how fast is the vehicle coming around the roundabout, or will I even make it across the roundabout? I am sure I am not alone when I say this.

Roundabouts are notorious for road traffic accidents; it’s not really a surprise. Even though the majority of accidents on roundabouts are not fatal and involve low speed collisions, people can still get injured and whiplash is one of the most common injuries.

A driver at fault usually fails to keep a proper lookout and often drives too fast resulting in accidents, or fails to give the correct right of way. Accidents commonly happen on roundabouts because drivers fail to wait for traffic to pass before entering the roundabout, fail to keep or move to the correct lane at the correct time, which causes last minute lane changes and sudden braking.
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Compensation Claims Lawyer Advice

For us, it’s not just about getting you the maximum amount of compensation in the quickest time possible; it’s also about helping you get back on the road to recovery as fast as we possibly can.

Rehabilitation for many injuries is the key to a successful recovery in as quicker time as possible. However, whilst the NHS does a fantastic job, we know that the process for getting help with the NHS can often be slow. For a claim for compensation with The Injury Lawyers, you don’t need to worry about waiting around for medical help at all!
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Most people think that to make a claim for compensation in for a road traffic accident you have to be in a vehicle; well they cannot be more wrong! Pedestrians are entitled to compensation all the same.

If have been a pedestrian who has been injured as a result of someone else’s negligent actions you are entitled to compensation, it’s the law. In fact, the law generally favours the plight of the pedestrian, so you should have a strong case so long as you didn’t do anything daft like run out in front of the road.

Here are a few basic examples of pedestrian compensation claims that you may well be able to relate to:
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If you were a passenger in a vehicle that has been involved in a road traffic accident and you have been injured as a result, you are entitled by law to make a claim for compensation.

Passenger claims are one of the most successful personal injury claims as you could never be at fault for the accident unless you did something daft like deliberately causing the accident by grabbing the wheel or the hand brake.

Therefore, passenger claims are the easiest claims to establish – if you were in a vehicle that collided into the back of someone and as a result of the driver’s negligent action you are injured, how can this be your fault? Or if you were a passenger in a vehicle and another vehicle collided into you – this cannot be your fault, and therefore you are entitled to compensation.
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Whiplash: what is it? We have all heard about it but do you know exactly what it is? You hear people expressing that whiplash isn’t really an injury and that making a whiplash claim is a scandal – they are totally wrong. People who have been involved in road traffic accidents can be injured and it can be more than a 24 hour bug. 

Whiplash is much more than what it is portrayed in the media and it can seriously affect people’s lives – I should know, I deal with whiplash claims every day. I hear clients complain about the pain and suffering it causes them as well as the effect it has on their day to day life – it is certainly much more than a slight niggle!

So what exactly is whiplash? Whiplash is a term used to describe a neck, shoulder and back injury resulting from being involved in a car accident. The sudden movement of the body, particularly, the neck, damages the ligaments and tendons in the neck. The force of the sudden movement makes your body move beyond its normal range of movement so that ligaments, tendons and muscles in your neck area are overstretched. To let you know, tendons are tough, fibrous bands that connect muscles to the bone and ligaments are the fibrous connective tissues that link two bones together at a joint.
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