Between our Partners and Senior Associates, we have more than one hundred years of experience to offer victims of accidents and disease, whether caused by road accidents, accidents at work, clinical negligence, exposure to dangerous substances causing diseases such as asbestosis or asthma, or any other sort of injury claim.
How many times have we heard 'Personal injury? That's whiplash from a car accident, isn't it?'. In fact, soft tissue injuries from road accidents form a small part of the work we do. By far the larger part of our work involves serious injuries from accidents at work, disease claims and serious road traffic accidents.
For example, did you know that if you are injured at work by a colleague who inadvertently loses concentration for a moment, you can claim compensation from your employer? Many people are afraid of bringing a claim against their employer as they do not want to name a colleague or 'get them into trouble'. In reality the claim will be dealt with by the employer's insurers and these cases are often simple to pursue because the employer is automatically liable for negligent acts of their employees.
If you are injured when carrying out your job at premises belonging to someone else, you may still have a claim, either against the owner or controller of those premises or even against your own employer in some cases.
We recently dealt with a case where a delivery driver was in a warehouse after unloading, when a fort lift truck driver accidentally drove over a large metal ramp raising it up in the air. It dropped down onto our client's foot which was badly crushed when the truck drove over the ramp. Obviously this was accidental, but it was still negligent in the eyes of the law and the employers of the fork lift truck driver were liable through their insurers.
Industrial diseases are not a thing of the past, even though their cause may be very much historical.
We are often consulted by hard working factory workers , pipefitters, carpenters and the like who, having long since retired, are then shocked to be given a diagnosis of asbestos related illness. If the diagnosis is within the last three years, it is likely that it will not matter if their exposure to a dangerous substance was decades ago, or even if the employer went out of business around the same time. In the majority of cases we can trace the insurer of the employer and they then have to deal with the claim. Proof of exposure to asbestos is the essential element.
Imagine being suddenly unable to work for several months or even years. A personal injury claim is then not a possibility, it is a necessity, particularly if there is a need for future care or treatment.
Whatever type of accident you have suffered, we are happy to advise you on whether or not you can make a claim.
Our department is led by Jan Markland, a Fellow of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). We also have another Fellow, two Senior Litigators and other Litigator Members of the Association in our team of dedicated personal injury lawyers.
This article was originally featured in The Bristol Nine magazine.