We helped Mr. C, a gentleman in his mid 50’s. Mr. C suffered serious head injuries in a fall from height in an accident at work. We advised Mr. C on a no win no fee basis throughout.
Mr. C was a maintenance engineer. On the day of his accident he was working alone on a remote site and at a height estimated later by the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) at 15 feet. There were no witnesses to his fall and he was found unconscious on the concrete floor, with a visibly serious head injury. He was rushed to hospital and then immediately transferred to a specialist regional head injury unit, still unconscious. The injury was life threatening and he was operated upon immediately. He remained in a coma for over a week and was in hospital for months.
Over a period of months and years Mr. C was rehabilitated and made a decent, although only partial, recovery. He was never fully fit to return to his pre-accident employment and so the outcome of his potential compensation claim was vital to how he could approach the rest of his life.
We were presented with a difficult case. Mr. C had no memory of how the accident had happened. There were no witnesses. The HSE investigation was inconclusive and there were no HSE prosecutions.
We carried out extremely thorough investigations as soon as Mr. C contacted us. We discovered that Mr. C’s employers had failed in many of their duties to try to ensure that Mr. C was given safe equipment for such work at height. They also failed to train employees effectively and to ensure that they adopted a safe system of work whilst working at height.
Although no-one will ever know exactly how the accident happened, we established that the lack of suitable and safe equipment and the lack of guidance and training had been at fault.
Falls from height are, sadly, a very common means of suffering injury and often result in serious injury or death. Because of this, claims arising out of falls present their own challenges and are subject to specific laws and regulations. Our expertise gives us a very good chance of succeeding for our clients in these difficult and serious cases.
In Mr. C’s case we issued court proceedings on the basis of the evidence we had gathered. High level negotiations with the employer’s insurers succeeded and the claim settled for £305,000.00.
