Slips And Trips

You can make a claim for injury compensastion where your slip or trip or fall was someone else’s fault. However identifying that person is not always as easy as it might seem. 

Make a Personal Injury Claim

If you need more information and wish to discuss your injury claim resulting from a trip or fall, please contact a member of our Personal Injury Claims Team or telephone 0845 603 1057.

Liability

The starting point must be to consider where the accident  as a result of a slip, trip or fall occurred. If you tripped on a pavement or road, then we need to consider a claim against the Highway Authority. If you slipped on or within someone else’s land then we need to consider a claim against the occupier.  However even once a Defendant has been identified, we need to prove that they are to blame for your fall.

If you fell on a pavement or road then was it due to a defect, such as a raised paving slab or a hole in the surface of the pavement or road? If it was, then there is very clear law on how high the paving slab has to be raised, or the depth and size of the hole. Generally speaking the height  or depth of the trip needs to be at least an inch.

Even then the Highway Authority can successfully defend the claim where they can prove that they have taken reasonable steps to inspect and maintain the highway. They usually do this by producing records of six monthly inspections and if a defect does not appear on the inspection immediately prior to your accident, they say it must come into being since the last inspection so they would not have known about it; therefore have no obligation to repair it.

Sometimes the Highway Authorities records are not the most reliable so if, for example, you can help us track down witnesses who will vouch the fact that the defect has been there for some time prior to the Highway Authorities last inspection before the accident. These witnesses are often crucial in establishing liability against the Highway Authority.

Photographic Evidence

If the defect in question is less than an inch high or an inch deep then again the council have a defence – a Court would say that it is reasonable to have some degree of unevenness in the surface of a pavement or road and height differences of less than an inch are acceptable. Therefore where you believe the height difference causing you to fall was an inch or more, it is vital that you take photographs as soon as possible, make them as clear as you can and place an object in the photograph as a guide to the height of the trip. A 50 pence coin, matchbox or ruler up against the trip or in the hole in question are useful, but make sure your photographs are clear. If you can imprint the date on the photograph, so that we can prove when they were taken, so much the better.

Bear in mind that, although the law on the subject is not fixed, it is likely that a defect in a road surface would have to be worse than a defect in a pavement in order to establish liability. You should assume, therefore, that a height difference of at least an inch and a half would be required in a road defect, compared with ‘only’ an inch or more in a pavement defect.

Contributory Negligence

Even where liability is established against the Highway Authority, expect them to allege that you were partly to blame for the accident for not looking where you were going. However whilst sometimes the allegation is justified, in plenty of cases it is not and if agreement cannot be reached, then we simply have to let the Court decide.

Of course your trip or slip may be caused by something other than a raised paving slab or a pot hole. It could be due to ice or tree roots for example. If we take ice as an example, there are circumstances in which you may be able to claim and others in which you may not. If the ice has formed as a result of water escaping from nearby land or a broken pipe, and if the defect had been there for some time, then there may be a claim. If the ice is caused by freezing weather and there was plenty of advanced warning or alternatively the cold snap had already lasted some while, then there may be a claim. If the ice formed quickly as a result of inclement weather, then there probably will not.

The occupier of land has a duty to take reasonable care for the safety of visitors using their premises under The Occupiers Liability Act 1957, and under the same Act they must be prepared for children to be less careful than adults. So if you trip or slip on private land you may be able to establish a breach of the 1957 Act.

The Need For Evidence and Your Claim

Remember, however, that you can only claim what you can prove.  We would need:

• photographs of the scene of the accident;
• a sketch plan;
• a detailed description from you about the trip or slip;
• together with contact details for as many independent witnesses as possible.

Proving Your Financial Losses

For information about recovering your financial losses as a result of a slip, trip or a fall, visit our page Proving Your Financial Losses Following An Accident.

Please speak to a member of our Personal Injury Claims team for professional advice about your accident claim.