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Public Liability Claims

If you or a member of your family is suffering from a personal injury caused by an accident in a public place, our specialist personal injury lawyers may be able to help you claim compensation. Contact us today on 0800 032 8511 for claim advice, or by completing a claim enquiry form .

Public Liability Accidents
What to do After an Accident
Making a Personal Injury Claim
Compensation
Our Specialist Lawyers
Public Liability Claims Handled by Our Lawyers

Public Liability Accidents

A claim for an accident that occurs on property open to the public is known as a public liability claim. If you have a slip, trip or fall on a public road or pavement, or in a building such as a shop, you may be entitled to make a public liability claim. The same would apply for other types of accidents caused by public property left in a dangerous condition, such as cuts caused by sharp protruding objects or injuries caused by falling debris.

The claim would be made against the person or organisation responsible for the property. They should have public liability insurance to cover any injuries they have caused to members of the public.

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What to Do After an Accident

If you are unfortunate enough to suffer an injury in an accident in a public place, it is helpful to your claim if you can take certain information. Witness details and photographs are particularly useful.  These should show the problem clearly and, if at all possible, should show an exact measurement of it’s height/depth. You should also keep details of any medical treatment and receipts for any injury related expenses that you may incur.

For accidents inside a building, such as a shop or leisure centre, try to ensure that the staff are informed and the incident recorded in any accident book.  See our accident checklist page for further information on steps to take following an accident.

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Making a Personal Injury Claim

Most importantly, if you are considering making a personal injury claim, you should seek specialist legal advice from a reputable lawyer.

In every case, medical evidence will be required. Detailed expert evidence is often also required in disease cases to show that the condition suffered by a claimant was caused by exposure to a particular substance.

In any personal injury claim it is necessary to show that the person you are making a claim against owed you a duty of care, that they breached that duty of care (were negligent), and that the injury you sustained was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that negligence.

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Compensation

If your claim is successful, and our Legal Line solicitors will be working hard to ensure that this will be the case, you will be entitled to two elements of a compensation award.

The first is for the pain and suffering you may have gone through and what is known as loss of amenity. This is called general damages and can include an award for your inability to do things after the accident that you used to be able to do before, eg, wash your car, make home improvements, walk the dog, etc. The award for loss of amenity can be for a short period after an accident or for ever if that is what the medical evidence supports.

The second element of a compensation award is for your losses and expenses and is known as special damages. It is important to keep receipts for any expenditure you have related to the accident, so that these can be reclaimed. The aim is to put you back in a position financially as if the accident had never occurred.

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Our Specialist Lawyers

The Legal Line lawyers are experts in the field of personal injury and have helped many people to recover damages in public liability claims. They can assist you at every stage of your claim and provide essential accident claim advice and guidance.

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Public Liability Claims Handled by Our Lawyers

Read below brief details of some previous cases, successfully dealt with by our expert lawyers on behalf of injured people:

• At the time of her accident, our client was visiting a sports shop with her husband. She went up a set of stairs to the first floor then began to walk across the shop floor through a gap of around 3-4 feet between the displays.

  Unfortunately someone had left a stepper, which is a piece of exercise equipment, in the middle of the floor. It was at a low level and in an unexpected place so the claimant had not seen it. She tripped over the stepper and fell to the ground, suffering a fracture to her upper arm.

  Our lawyers assisted her in making a personal injury claim against the shop. Initially, the other side failed to respond despite chasing and consequently following a Court Application against them, they accepted blame. The sum of £8,550 was recovered in damages on her behalf. This was in respect of the pain and suffering caused by the injury, costs the claimant had incurred because of it and the care that she required during her recovery.

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