If you are looking at this blog you may be considering making an accident at work claim. At The Injury Lawyers, we know making a claim against your employer can be a challenging task to perform; however, our advice is that you can instruct lawyers to fight your corner and act on your behalf. Employers should also have insurance in place to deal with these types of situations – the insurers will investigate and come to a conclusion whether your employer was at fault – and if so, how much you should be fairly recompensed for that failure.

There are a number of areas of safety which your employer should consider:

Personal Protective Equipment
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It is an unfortunate fact that the number of road traffic accidents are increasing.  A major reason for this may be that there is an increased amount of traffic on the roads, together with people having busier lives – being in a rush and not taking the necessary care and attention when it comes to driving safely.

After suffering a road accident, you may think that it is too much hassle and bother to begin a claim for personal injury. However, this simply does not have to be the case, and there can be many reasons why bringing a claim for your road accident is beneficial:

A new, faster system
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If you have been injured due to a faulty product or a dodgy service, you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.

We have something called the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 that is designed to ensure that any good or service you receive is fit and safe for use / purpose. Nowadays, all products must undergo rigorous testing and checking to ensure there is no way anyone can be injured. When it comes to services, those providing them should be fully qualified and trained, with a good knowledge of health and safety to ensure no rule or regulation is ever broken.

The main problem is that we all tend to implicitly trust a product we buy or a service we use. When you tuck in to that sandwich from your local supermarket, how do you know that it wasn’t accidentally dropped on the floor before being packaged? How do you know that the builder who has just completed your new garage extension has built it properly? How do you know that the shop who have just returned your laptop from repair put the wires back in properly?
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Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE as it is more informally known, is equipment which can be used or worn to protect you against risks to your health and safety. PPE is something which you should not pay for – your employer should not even ask you for a contribution. They are solely responsible for supplying it to you.

It should be of note that PPE should only be used as a last port of call where no other methods act just as well, or better, at protecting you from risks to your health and safety at work. So, if your employer is giving you PPE in order to save money as a better method of protection is more costly, this is wrong.

Your employer has a duty to protect you as much as possible from risks to your health and safety. By simply providing you with the PPE, this is not fully completing their duty – they must also train their employees in how to use it and ensure it is maintained regularly and stored correctly.  Employers must also consider whether the PPE causes a danger in itself – by this I mean if there a chance of overheating whilst wearing or using PPE, or if your PPE could get caught up in machinery.
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A Repetitive Strain Injury, or RSI as it is informally known, is an umbrella term which can cover a whole host of injuries. The injuries it covers are those which are caused by the repetitive use of parts of the body.

It is an extremely prevalent disorder affecting as many as 1 in 50 workers. This comes as no surprise, as not only can it affect manual workers, but also those desk workers who are typing away all day long.

The Types of RSI
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The Telegraph has recently reported that a study by The Association of British Insurers has shown that 1,200 claims for whiplash are made every day, which equates to three-quarters of personal injury claims in the United Kingdom, and is six times as many claims as those for accidents at work. 

In fact, it is the United Kingdom which sees the largest volume of whiplash claims within Europe.  As a result, the Telegraph writes that the NHS spends approximately £8million a year helping people with whiplash injuries, and insurances companies are paying out an estimated £2billion a year in compensation for these whiplash injuries.

So – what is whiplash? Whiplash is normally a neck, back, and shoulder injury caused by the soft tissue in the spine being forcefully jerked – e.g. from the impact of being hit behind by another person’s motor vehicle.  So, how do I know if you have whiplash?  Here are the common symptoms:
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Can a child bring a claim for compensation? On their own, no.  With a litigation friend, yes.  So – what is a litigation friend?

Where a person has suffered an injury and they are under the age of 18, they are required by law to have a litigation friend to conduct their claim on their behalf.  A litigation friend is therefore a responsible adult who acts on a minor’s (a person under the age of 18) behalf.  In most cases a litigation friend will be a child’s parents or guardians; but equally it could be a family friend or some other trustworthy adult.

The law recognises that a child of the age of say four or five may have a genuine claim for compensation having been injured through no fault of their own, but that this child does not have the capacity to proceed with a claim on their own.  In other words, a child does not have the ‘legal capacity’ to conduct legal proceedings.  This is also similarly applied to persons deemed a ‘protected party’ under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.  They too will require a litigation friend to conduct their claim for them.
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If you were correctly driving along, or you were sitting stationary in your vehicle, when rather annoyingly some other driver rams you up the backside, I have some good news and some bad news for you.

I’ll start with the bad – to get it over and done with – in the next few days (or even hours) you will probably start feeling pain, soreness, stiffness, and / or aches in your neck, shoulders, and back. This is called whiplash – and it’s an absolute pain to live with (I know – I’ve currently got it as well thanks to my local bus service!).

The common symptoms of whiplash are:
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At The Injury Lawyers, we have a huge number of clients suffering from the symptoms of whiplash.  We hear on a daily basis of the pain the condition causes, and the devastating effect the injury can have on all areas of a person’s life. That is why we treat whiplash with the utmost seriousness and give it the importance it deserves.

Causes

Whiplash is caused by a sudden jolting to the neck, which causes it to move beyond its normal range.  This can lead to damage to the tendons, ligaments, and muscles in the neck area, causing the condition.
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The state of our roads has become a much talked about topic – not just in passing speech, but also in the media. Only today I have seen on the BBC News that road safety charities have warned that unless councils take a fresh approach to repairing roads, the amount they will have to pay out in compensation to injured claimants will escalate. The Institute of Advanced Motorists claim that Councils need to fully resurface roads rather than just filling in the holes. It has been revealed that the Vale of Glamorgan and Newport Councils have some of the largest pay-out figures on pothole claims over the last four years within Wales – the former being £245, 967, whilst the latter have figures of £203,913.

It seems that councils are having trouble fixing the damage caused to the roads due to the bad weather we had over the winter.  If you have been injured due to the presence of a pothole, you may have a claim for compensation.

Local councils have a duty to maintain the highways, and in doing so, reduce the risks to our health and safety.  However, claims due to potholes can be fairly complex for a number of reasons. Firstly, it can be difficult to ascertain who has the responsibility for maintaining the land, as it could be privately owned, be the responsibility of the local council, or highways agency, or even be a private company used by the council for managing the maintenance. Secondly, in the event the land is the responsibility of the council, it can be difficult to get an admission of fault on your claim.
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