If you slip or fall in a shop, a pubic pavement or a road, you may be able entitled to make public liability compensation claims for any injuries suffered.
Personal injury claims and personal injury cases can include trip hazards such as tree roots, injuries caused by sharp objects, neglected warning signs, lost earnings due to your accident, and anything that required you to receive medical treatment.
You will need to be able to show that the organisation that was responsible for your safety on public property was at fault.
PR Scully injury solicitors are personal injury compensation claim lawyers who operate under a no win no fee basis. It’s vital to use expert personal injury lawyers in order to receive appropriate compensation for your claims process.
Get in touch today to discuss potential public liability claims and how much compensation you may be entitled to with your injury claims
Contact us via our website or ring us on 0161 667 8260 for a consultation about your liability claim with our liability team
Claims for injuries sustained in public places
If an accident happened to you in a public place that was not your fault, you may be entitled to make a public liability insurance claim, because the responsibility for your accident might lie with businesses, shopping centres, the local council, or the owner of a shop.
How do I know if I am entitled to make a public liability compensation claim?
In order to make a successful public liability claim, you must be able to demonstrate that an organisation or individual was at fault for what happened. The fact that you have been unfortunate enough to suffer an injury is probably not going to be in dispute. What might be disputed is whether or not the landowner or business owner is responsible for what happened.
You have to be able to show that the landowner was aware of the defect that caused the injury and did not take reasonable steps to prevent that from happening.
Public responsibility and legal requirement
The Courts view is that a Local Authority cannot reasonably be expected to make sure that every inch of pavement and roadway is in perfect condition at all times. That would be financially and practically impossible for a Local Authority to do.
However, what the Court does expect is that the Local Authority have a reasonable system of inspection and repair in place. If the finances are not available to make sure roads are repaired, thus creating a public liability, that is not your problem. If a defect on a pavement or a roadway has been left for too long when it should have been repaired by the Local Authority, potentially causing slips, trips and falls, then, depending on the size of the defect, the Local Authority is likely to be held responsible.
Get in touch today to discuss potential public liability claims and how much compensation you may be entitled to with your personal injury claims
Contact us via our website or ring us on 0161 667 8260 for a consultation about your liability claim with our liability team
What information do I need to provide?
It is important that you take photographs of the area that you fell as soon as possible after the accident has taken place. Ideally, photographs with a tape measure showing the length and depth of the hole/defect would help.
If any of the people who live in the area are able to comment on how long the defect has been present, or anything else that might constitute a neglected warning sign that would serve as evidence to strengthen your case, would serve as very useful evidence. Especially if they have made any phone calls or written to the council.
How do I bring a public liability claim?
PR Scully will take all the relevant contact details from you and then contact the landowner to ask them about their public liability insurance cover. If the likely value of the compensation claim is below £25,000, we then lodge notification of the claim on an online portal. The insurers then have 20 working days to make investigations and respond.
If the insurers accept liability, PR Scully will then make arrangements for you to be medically examined and a copy of the medical report will be submitted to the insurers on the same online portal. At the same time as sending the medical report, we advise the insurers of how much compensation we think that you should be awarded.
If the insurers respond with a fair offer, we will most likely advise you to accept. If the offer is unreasonable, we will ask the insurers to make an interim payment and then issue Court proceedings to ask the Court to assess the level of damages that should be awarded. If we do have to issue proceedings, it is just a paper exercise and you do not need to attend the Court.
What if liability is disputed?
If the insurer does not respond within 20 working days, the case drops out of the online portal system and the insurer becomes entitled to a 3 -month period to investigate further.
If ultimately the insurer disputes that the landowner is liable for the accident, then as long as we are satisfied that you have a strong case, we will issue Court proceedings against the landowner.
Before proceedings are issued, we have to be sure that you have the approval of your legal expense insurer. We do this to make sure that you have protection from any potential costs orders that might be made.
Get in touch today to discuss potential public liability claims and how much compensation you may be entitled to with your personal injury claims CONTACT US via our website or ring our phone number on 0800 083 6290.