What is a work injury claim?

You may be surprised to learn that work place accidents are very common. Most people associate these work injury claims with industrial environments, but the truth is that work injury claims can be made by employees in any environment regardless of whether they work in an office, factory, industrial site or on the road.

If you have been injured at work you could be entitled to compensation. This is because employers have duty of care towards their employees’ health and safety. This means that employers must provide their employees with appropriate training, protective clothing and they should regularly service or maintain machinery. Depending on the industry in which you are employed there may be other risks which your employer is obliged to protect you from. However employees also have a responsibility to utilise the equipment and training that they have been provided with otherwise an accident or injury may be deemed to be the employee’s own fault.

Nevertheless, despite the rules in place and the precautions taken by employers accidents still happen and when they do, if an employee suffers an injury, provided it is not their fault then they can make a claim for compensation.

What type of accident?

Work injuries can take many forms from driving accidents to exposure to harmful and dangerous substances such as asbestos or carbon monoxide. You could have suffered an injury due to slipping on a wet floor. You could be suffering from vibration white finger, which is caused by the use of vibrating tools or suffer loss of hearing from using noisy tools. The more serious the injury the more compensation you will be entitled to. Your employer will automatically offer you statutory sick pay, but this may not be enough as you may be unable to return to work for some time. Accordingly, you are also entitled to claim compensation for future loos of income.

Making a claim

You should not be afraid to make a work injury compensation claim against your employer. If you are dismissed or harassed because of it then you can make a further claim for unfair or constructive dismissal. In any event, by law employers must have Employer’s Liability Insurance to cover them against work injury compensation claims and it is the insurance company that will pay compensation to the employee. Of course no insurance company will make this payment without sufficient evidence that the injury happened during the course of employment and that the employer was responsible.

Accordingly, any accidents should be recorded in your employer’s health and safety file and serious accidents should be reported to the Government’s Health and Safety Executive. Pictures or a video should be taken as evidence and you should speak to any colleagues about whether they are willing to act as witnesses if required. You should seek medical advice immediately and keep copies of all correspondence with your employer. You should also keep receipts of any medical expenses, both as proof of your injury and so that you can claim them back as part of your compensation. If there is evidence of similar accidents occurring in the past then this will also help your case.

A work injury compensation claim should be made within 3 years of the date of the incident. If the extents of the injuries are not known immediately, then you have 3 years from the date you become aware of them. If at the time of the accident the employee is under 18 then the 3 years do not begin until the employee’s 18^th birthday. If you make a work injury claim through a solicitor they will usually deal with your case on a no win no fee basis and if you are successful you should receive all of the compensation money with your costs paid by your employer’s insurance company. When choosing a work injury claim solicitor you should make sure you pick one that is experienced with dealing with work injury claims.

Going on holiday is normally the highlight in any person or family’s year. Not only are holidays exciting but they can also be very expensive. However all too often holidays of a lifetime can quickly turn into holidays from hell.

When things do go wrong on holiday the injured parties are normally determined to claim for their losses.

Common Holiday Complaints

So what are some of the most common holiday complaints?

1. The hotel/resort was of poor quality and not how it was represented in the brochure or by the tour operator

2. Getting food poisoning

3. Suffering a personal injury whilst abroad either at the hotel or on a trip

4. Serious flight/travel delays

If either you or one of your travel party suffered one of the complaints above (or indeed any other type of loss or injury) then you may well be entitled to bring a holiday compensation claim. When you do bring a holiday claim you will be able to claim amongst other things the following:

• Loss of the Holiday Experience – obviously your holiday which you have been looking forward for a long time has been ruined. You will be able to claim for this loss of enjoyment from the date you suffered the injury and your holiday was ruined.
• Recovery of Personal Expenses – you will be able to recover all  out of poclet expenses you incurred as a result of the injury or loss. These would include for example medical bills, taxi expenses, interpreter costs, travel insurance excess etc.
• Loss of Earnings – you can claim back any loss of earnings you have suffered as a result of not being able to work as a result of the loss/injury.
• Future Losses – you will be able to claim for future losses you may suffer as a result of the loss/injury. This can include future earnings, future costs (eg medical costs) and possible pension payments that may be forfeited as a result of the accident or injury.
• Care Costs – if you require full time care as a result of the accident or injury then you will be entitled to claim for these costs.
• Costs for any Pain and Suffering – finally you will be entitled to claim for all pain and suffering you had a result of the accident. You should note that to succeed in claiming money under this head then the pain you suffered has to be very severe and for a reasonably long time.

Holiday Package Claims For Cruises

If you booked your holiday cruise through a holiday package company then the Package Travel, Package Tours and Package Holidays Regulations 1992 may apply to your claim if your cruise or was included in your holiday package and you did not enter into a separate contract of carriage. The regulations will then make the tour operator or other holiday organiser liable for all elements of the holiday which are provided as part of the packaged holiday including the boat cruise.

Group Claims

In some cases it is usual for a lot of people who stay at the same hotel to suffer the same loss or injury. For example, in cases of food poisoning at hotels or on a cruise ship, a lot of guests will suffer. In these cases, it may be useful for all the injured people to bring a claim together.  The reason for that is that it can be quite difficult to prove food poisoning in a one off case. The hotel, tour operator or ship liner will do all they can to protect their reputation and cover up the illness as much as possible. The more people who bring the same claim then the greater the evidence that something did indeed go wrong on holiday. This will also hopefully bring enough pressure on the tour operator or liner company to settle.

It is therefore important that if you go on holiday and suffer an illness or injury or loss (eg the hotel was of a poor standard) that you think other guests might have suffered, to try and locate these people, exchange details, compare notes and try and bring a coordinated response together.

In these type of cases it may be best to see a lawyer together and he will advise on the merits of bring a group claim or not.

What To Do On Your Return

If you have suffered a loss on holiday then upon your return to the UK it is vital that you do the following:

1. If you have suffered an injury then see a doctor, explain what happened and get him to conduct all necessary medical tests which might corroborate your claim (eg taking stool samples in the case of food poisoning)
2. See a lawyer who can advise you further on how best to proceed with your claim. Most lawyers operate under a No Win No Fee policy for this type of work so if they consider you have a good claim then it will not cost you any money to bring a claim.

Those that are either involved in personal injury work, who work in the medical profession or have tragically been exposed to asbestos will be aware that, whilst asbestosis often appears to be an issue which is historical, the problems of asbestos in buildings are still present and the latent effects of this substance are still killing people.

In fact, as new data suggests, rather than the number of asbestos related illnesses and deaths tailing off, they are in fact increasing based on the fact this horrible illness often takes decades to manifest.

Research from the BBC indicates that deaths relating to asbestos are at an all-time high and have quadrupled since the 1980’s in Eastern England. To put this into some kind of practical context, 115 people tragically died of asbestosis in the County of Essex alone last year

The Health & Safety Executive advises that asbestos related deaths are likely to continue to increase in the next 5 years and many people do not know that use of asbestos and the killer dust that it creates were only banned from use in 1999 and that there are still many buildings which contain this killer dust.

Many jump on the bandwagon of criticizing all kinds of personal injury claims as being somehow unjustified or a “gravy train” but asbestos related personal injury claims, like thousands of other personal injury claims, leave victims and their families in a tragic situation through no fault of their own. These claims are legitimate and often go unpublicised.

An MP has claimed that his constituents have contacted him complaining of  being harangued by personal injury compensation firms after receiving hospital treatment in the areas around  the Wirral and Liverpool, and making the assumption that details of their hospital stay and reasons for it are being leaked. These claims have been denied by relevant hospitals.

A spokesman for the Royal Liverpool said the allegations were “completely false”.

Data suggests that spam text messages have now reached the level of nearly 12.75 million a month and this is likely to represent breach of data protection on a massive scale, since consent is required before data can be passed on, and even then, consent may be given for information to be passed to certain sectors but not others. Obviously, the figure of over 12 million does not relate to injury claims, but this is a big problem, not least for credibility of lawyers generally and personal injury lawyers specifically.  Clearly, if staff in hospitals are found to be selling data, this is bad news in all respects.