Occupiers' liability may apply where a defective drain cover causes an accident on premises In this post, we are looking at situations where you might have a claim for injury following an accident on premises owned or occupied by someone else. In Scotland, the Occupiers’ Liability (Scotland) Act 1960, requires occupiers of premises to take reasonable care for people who come onto their premises to see to it that they are not injured due to the state of the premises. While this is a statutory duty, because the obligation imposed is to take reasonable care, you still have to prove fault, as under the general law of negligence. Often this will mean it is necessary to gather evidence about how long the hazard in question had been in existence before the accident. The argument you have to counter is that, if the defect had not been there for very long before the accident, there was not sufficient time for the occupier to identify it and repair it before any accident happened and so Continue Reading