“The room is full of steam from the kettle but you still make the tea.” These were words of my school chemistry teacher. What was the point? That a small volume of water produces a large volume of steam. If you put water on to boil for a cup of tea but then get distracted by something else, you may return to find the room filled with steam but there will probably still be enough water left to make your brew. This idea that you can forget about something for a while, come back to it and the outcome will still be okay seems to be one that many folk with possible personal injury compensation claims have too. The problem is that personal injury claims are up against a hard deadline. In most cases, that deadline is 3 years from the date of the accident/injury. If you don’t settle your claim by negotiation within the 3-year period, you’ll have to raise a court action to keep the claim alive beyond the deadline - or lose the right to claim forever. It’s inevitable Continue Reading
Don’t let your personal injury claim get thagomized (by getting a move on now)
Do you know what a thagomizer is? The thagomizer is an arrangement of 4 to 10 spikes on the tails of dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus. The pointy bits provided a defensive weapon against predators. Stegosaurus was a herbivore. With a toothless beak and small teeth, it was not designed to eat flesh. Legendary cartoonist, Gary Larson, coined the term ‘thagomizer’ in his 1982 image of a caveman giving a PowerPoint presentation to colleagues and telling them it was so-called “after the late Thag Simmons”. Poor Thag. ‘Thagomizer’ has come to be adopted as an informal anatomical term. It’s used on the Stegosaurus display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.. Clearly, Stegosaurus had a mighty sting in the tail, if required. Personal injury claims can have a sting in the tail too, if you don’t watch out. The cruel defence is one of ‘delay’. Wait too long and your claim will become unenforceable and lost forever. As we have discussed elsewhere, the Continue Reading
How often to remind Your Personal Injury Solicitor about Your Case
One of my favourite “job interview” jokes features in various memes on the internet. HR Manager: "What is your greatest weakness?" Interviewee : "Honesty." HR Manager: "I don't think honesty is a weakness." Interviewee : "I don't really give a *!@# what you think." Of course, interviews are intense, stressful experiences where it seems so much can go wrong, including being "too honest". But what if the thing that goes wrong is that you don’t even make it to the interview? What if you make a mistake with the date? It’s not hard to find this sort of "date error" experience reported on the internet. “I’ve just come back from my interview at X, which I went to a week early, and took a day off college for.” “If a candidate turned up a whole week early for an interview, how badly would it affect their chances in your eyes?” “I'm mortified. I must have misread their email. Do I still have a chance of getting the job?” “Well, better a week early than a week Continue Reading
Work Accident Prosecution Delays Put Compensation Claims At Risk
If a worker is fatally injured as the result of an accident at work, there will often be an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Available options include: the holding of a Fatal Accident Inquiry by the procurator fiscal; criminal prosecution of the employer and/or any other business which might have been "in control" of the workplace at the time of the accident under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Examples of employer prosecutions as the result of a fatal accident HSE publishes a weekly email bulletin - to which anyone can subscribe - which gives details of the latest health and safety breaches which have given rise to criminal convictions for businesses. The accidents involve life-changing injuries and some result in fatalities. Using as an example the most recent bulletin, we find several reports of fines imposed on businesses for deaths of workers in a variety of circumstances: A landscape gardener who fell under the wheels of a Continue Reading
How Long Do I Have To Make A Personal Injury Claim?
I recently had to travel to a family funeral in Germany with my wife. We flew with KLM from Aberdeen to Cologne via Amsterdam. On the way there, we had one hour in Amsterdam Airport to catch our connecting flight. From previous experience, we knew this might be a problem. Schiphol is a sprawling airport. It is designed as a central hub with “spokes” going off from the centre and, on each spoke, there are up to 30 Gates. Gates with low numbers are close to the central hub and Gates with higher numbers are further out. On arrival at Amsterdam, we were on time. The aircraft’s parking stance was at Gate C18 and we understood we had to get to Gate D4. “C” and “D” are two different spokes, so we would have to get from one Gate to the other via the hub. When we checked the departure boards, we found that the departure Gate had been changed to D28. Travelator walkways on the spokes help to speed you on your way but, at the hub, we had to go through Security again and there Continue Reading