At Grigor & Young (Moray Claims is a trading name of Grigor & Young) we get a lot of enquiries from people who need legal advice in relation to work done on their house, usually somewhere in Moray. This covers everything from new builds to renovations and extensions. The types of contractors involved include builders, electricians, plumbers, joiners and double-glazing companies. In varying degrees, these situations are a "nightmare" and, as we go on to explain below, it is often not financially realistic to engage the services of a solicitor to help you. Essentially, this article is an effort to warn you of the need to plan and organise various things at the beginning rather than leaving them until later - when things have already gone wrong and it's "too late". Unlike many articles on this website, while we still hope to educate and inform you, we're not hoping to get business from it... If you’re going to get work done on your property, here are 5 things to Continue Reading
3 Important Features of Accidents involving Work at Height
Sunday, 26 August 2018 marked the 90th anniversary of the “snail in the ginger beer bottle” incident. While enjoying a drink with a friend in the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley, May Donoghue found an unwelcome addition to the contents of her bottled drink in the form of a decomposing snail. The injury she suffered when she drank the unpleasant mixture gave rise to the case of Donoghue –v- Stevenson, one of the most famous personal injury cases of all time. Though you would more readily link cheese with a mouse than ginger beer with a snail, it was ironic that a dead animal should again feature in a personal injury scenario reported so close to Donoghue –v- Stevenson’s 90th anniversary. On 22 August 2018, Kirkwall Sheriff Court dealt with a criminal prosecution arising out of an accident in a cheese factory in Orkney. A dead mouse caused an employee to have to work at a height from which he (the employee) fell and suffered injury. In this article, we will look at three aspects of work Continue Reading
Why would you want to become a Personal Injury Solicitor?
When I was a child, my parents used to get the Reader’s Digest and I was fascinated by a regular feature in that, called "Drama in Real Life". They would have titles like: One Handhold from Death, 'Pull me out!' and The man who wouldn't jump. These articles would tell the story of how do someone survived a situation of great personal peril, which could be anything from a natural disaster to a hotel fire or an accident at work. Often, other people involved in the situation did not make it out alive. This would get me thinking about how better precautions or preventative measures might have been taken so as to avoid the injury and loss of life. As I grew older, I remember feelings of frustration in situations where I felt powerless because I did not know my legal rights. It has been said that "If you don't know your rights, you don't have any". What I perceived as injustice in many situations really frustrated me. It got me thinking that, if I knew about my own rights letter, Continue Reading
How best to find a Personal Injury Solicitor using the Law Society of Scotland’s Online Tool
(NOTE: This post contains a screencast video, below, with a walk-through of how best to use the Law Society of Scotland's "Find a Solicitor" Online Tool to locate a specialist personal injury solicitor who is local to you). You don’t have to use the solicitors your insurers may tell you to use for your personal injury claim. We recommend you to get help from a solicitor who meets two main criteria: They should be local, and they should be specialised. 1. Local solicitor We recommend you to engage the services of a local solicitor, if possible. What do we mean by local? Ideally, a solicitor who is local to you and local to the location of the accident. Even getting a solicitor who is local in only one of these two ways is probably better than a solicitor who is neither close to you nor the place where the accident happened. 2. Specialist solicitor These days, all solicitors are specialists to some extent. Personal injury law is a complex area and you need Continue Reading