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School Caretaker Injured in Accident at Work

6th January 2009

A caretaker injured in a workplace accident was recently awarded compensation in a case handled by our specialist personal injury lawyers.

Accident at Work

At the time of his injury the claimant, a senior caretaker at a school, was boarding up a broken window. He had not been trained on how to carry out risk assessments for his tasks and there was no set system in place for dealing with broken windows.

The board slipped as he was holding it and he suffered a serious wound to his wrist. He felt that his employer did not take sufficient measures to protect him from suffering a work-related injury and so appointed our lawyers to assist him in making a compensation claim.

Personal Injury Claim

Initially the defendants argued that they were not responsible for what happened, stating that, as an experienced caretaker, the claimant should have risk-assessed the job himself and requested any training that he required.

Our lawyers asserted however that under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations the responsibility to ensure that risk assessments were carried out lay with the employer, to be sure that there was no other reasonable way of carrying out the task that could reduce the risk of injury as far as possible. It would only be acceptable to delegate this responsibility to an employee if they had the relevant training and knowledge, which the claimant did not.

The Judge found in favour of the claimant, as there had been no risk assessment carried out at all and, if there had, it would have identified the task as more safely performed by two people. He therefore received compensation in respect of his injuries.

Compensation Claim Advice

If you have suffered a personal injury in an accident at work, or any other type of accident where someone else was to blame, it may be possible to make a claim for damages.

Contact The Legal Line on 0800 0328511 for cost free accident claim advice and assistance. Alternatively, complete a claim enquiry form online and one of our advisers will contact you.