Personal injury claims are hugely prevalent and varied. Road accidents, workplace accidents, medical accidents – they all have the potential to inflict injury, and, in many cases, trigger legal action.
Accidents are more common than you think
While we might not spend much time thinking about accidents, the fact is that they’re a fairly everyday occurrence. In the workplace, there are around half a million reported accidents a year, according to the Labour Force Survey. In certain kinds of workplace, like those involved in construction and agriculture, you’re more at risk than you might be elsewhere.
On the road, we see more than a hundred thousand casualties, which amounts to around one for every two million vehicle miles. In some of these cases, blame can be apportioned – either to other motorists, or to the authorities that allowed the roads themselves to fall into disrepair.
As varied as these cases might be, most of them tend to fall into a handful of categories.
What are the most common claims?
Accidents at work and road traffic accidents constitute a substantial chunk of claims. On top of these, we might consider accidents in public and medical negligence.
In the former case, we’re talking about accidents that occur to people walking down the street, or any public place. If you’ve slipped and fallen because someone mopped up the floor in your local shopping centre, without prominently displaying a warning, then you could be entitled to pursue a claim.
Medical negligence is a broader category. For medical negligence to have occurred, the medical professional or institution will need to have failed in its duty of care, and harm will need to have been suffered as a result.
In most cases, these kinds of legal cases are undertaken on a no-win, no-fee basis. This means that you won’t need to worry about losing the case and being faced with a substantial bill. The solicitor will assess the likelihood of a successful claim, and either take the case or reject it at the outset.
Why do accidents occur?
Most accidents occur as a result of a lack of care, or because appropriate preventative measures were not implemented. If either of these can be demonstrated, then your claim will, in all probability, be successful.
On the other hand, there do exist a minority of accidents that could not have been reasonably anticipated. We might call these ‘freak’ accidents, for which no one can be blamed. If you’re hit by another motorist, who was typing out a tweet at the time, then you could pursue legal action. If you suffer the same accident because a wild animal ran into the road, then a legal remedy will likely not be within reach.
