Personal Injury Claims Bristol Blog

A footballer with a promising future has been awarded £10million in compensation following a road traffic accident.  17-year-old Jack Farrugia had been a front seat passenger of car when the driver lost control and collided with a stationary van.  He had been wearing a seatbelt when the accident happened in November 2008, but was left with serious brain injuries and was in a coma for a month.

After a gate was found to be potentially dangerous by a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report in 2004, a young boy has lost three fingertips in the gate described as a “guillotine”.  The six-year-old boy, who suffered with learning difficulties, got his hand trapped in the hinges of the gate, cutting off three of his fingertips.  Salford City Council has been fined £20,000 for the accident that happened at Springwood Special Educational Needs Primary School in Swinton.

The family of a girl who was left severely brain damaged after an operation has finally been awarded compensation following a twenty-year battle.  Nathalie Sugden was left with serious brain damage as a result of failures during a heart operation at Bristol Royal Infirmary.  The operation was carried out a month after her birth, August 1994, by a surgeon who was struck off for incompetence by the GMC following the failed operation.

A Gloucestershire family is currently seeking compensation for their 15-year-old son after he suffered severe injuries when his bike went into a pothole during a charity ride.  Ollie Pike, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, smashed his head and broke his collarbone in the accident on the 9^th of March.  He said that he swerved to avoid one set of potholes, but as a result went crashing into another.  He was then thrown to the ground after being propelled over his handlebars.

Recently released figures have revealed that Thanet Council has paid out around £150,000 in compensation to injury claimants in the past five years alone.  The figures were attained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Gazette newspaper, finding that a total of 70 claims had been made against the council in the last five years.  In only the past year, a total of 13 claims were made, with a total of £28,298 being paid-out 

The family of a young boy who died shortly after heart surgery in Bristol Children’s Hospital have referred to NHS issues as “disgusting”.  Luke Jenkins (7) was submitted to Bristol Children’s Hospital having suffered a cardiac arrest; he died shortly after heart surgery in March 2012. Luke’s parents recently discovered that his death was not recorded accurately in official figures submitted by the hospital.  They complained to the medical director of the NHS, who replied with an apology admitting that there must have been a data error.

With a newly proposed plan to save money by reducing “weekend park duties” in Brighton and Hove, the GMB union has argued that this will greatly increase the number of accident and compensation claims made on behalf of injured children. Brighton and Hove City Council has already paid out £23,500 to children injured in its playgrounds in the last five years.  Its proposed budget aims to save £40,000 by cutting weekend inspections of playgrounds, known as “weekend park duties”.

The mother of a 19-month-old boy is furious after her son suffered a serious cut on his leg as a result of the security tag being left on his trousers purchased at H&M.  Emma Lipscombe had been trying to dress her son in the newly purchased trousers when he began to scream in pain.  The security tag had been left inside one of the trousers’ pockets, with the sharp pin cutting into the leg of the boy as his mother tried to put them on.

Ten years after an accident that took the lives of four men working on a railway line, a rail union has called for the safety measures of workers to be improved. The Rail, Maritime & Transport (RMT) said that not enough improvements have been made to protect workers following the accident that happened a decade ago, and that action must be taken now to prevent the accident from repeating itself. The men were killed by a runaway 16-tonne wagon on the West Coast Main Line at Tebay.

New figures have revealed that Redbridge Council has paid out almost £100,000 in compensation to people involved in accidents at school.  Out of all of London’s 32 boroughs, Redbridge Council sees the 5th highest amount of payouts, with neighbouring Waltham Forest compensating as little as half of Redbridge Council, with only a third of the claims.  The figures showed that over the last five years, the council has received 61 personal injury claims that relate to children, staff, parents, visitors and contractors.

With London’s schools having paid out over £1,609,000 to injured children in the last five years, figures have uncovered Bromley and Hackney to have the safest schools in the city. Health and safety experts ‘Employment Law Advisory Service’ (ELAS) released the figures through a ‘Freedom of Information’ request, showing that over 1,010 personal injury claims were made against the city’s schools since September 2008.  

Figures released yesterday have revealed that hundreds of primary school pupils are receiving record payouts.  The last five years has seen the funding of £3.3million worth of compensation in school injury claims, with injuries spanning from slipping on wet floors to hitting heads on goalposts.  Even though calculations lead to the figure of £3.3million, experts believe that the true cost is much more.

An OAP that slipped on the floor in a Midland branch of Starbucks coffee house has won a four-figure payout from the multinational chain.  Seventy-one-year-old Rosemarie Duggan from Perry Bar had been at the chain’s Bescot Retail Park outlet in Walsall when she slipped on the ‘greasy’ floor.  Mrs Duggan suffered a torn hamstring in the fall, despite other customers already having complained about the dangers of the floor condition.

The government has proposed new legislation that will see willful negligence being treated as a criminal offence under NHS changes that are to be revealed next week.  This decision has been made following the recent Mid Staffordshire scandal and others similar, which will see those guilty of “willful neglect” being sentenced to jail.  If found guilty, the offence will be punishable by up to five years in prison under the Mental Capacity Act.

The company responsible for the recent death of 18-year-old Suzanne Cornwell has been fined £10,000 for breaching health and safety laws.  When Miss Cornwell’s scarf became tangled in her go-kart in December 2009, she suffered “critical” neck injuries and was unconscious when paramedics arrived at the Cambridgeshire raceway.

A Manx heart charity has donated 40 defibrillators to primary schools on the Isle of Man after raising over £60,000 in recent charity events.  Paula Lunt founded the charity donating the defibrillators - Craig’s Heartstrong Foundation - after her son died of an undiagnosed heart defect in April 2005. Since then the charity has been working hard to equip schools and sports clubs across the island with the potentially life-saving equipment.

42-year-old John Crockford is taking part in a 500-mile fundraising race this weekend after having survived a crash on his superbike in 2011.  The former superbike rider suffered 30 fractures when he collided with another rider at 130mph at a race on the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent.  The father of one has returned to the track to raise money for the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance service after having made a full recovery.

A street in Leeds has been labeled the worst stretch of road for potholes in the country after more than £500,000 in compensation has gone out to those that have sustained injuries on it.  Kings Lane was found to be the worst street after a YEP, Yorkshire Evening Post, investigation uncovered the fact that Leeds City Council bosses have had to payout a total of £526,449 to personal injury claimants over the last four financial years.

An 82-year-old dementia sufferer has sustained severe cuts and bruises after falling into an open sewer at her care home in Doncaster. The council has been fined over £7,000 for leaving the 2 meter-deep manhole unguarded at Oldfield House in Stainforth. 

The Cheshire-based Children’s Immunisation Centre – who had been selling separate mumps, measles and rubella vaccines – has received numerous complaints after claiming online that a link was present between the MMR jab and autism.  The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told the centre to remove the “misleading” claim from their website, arguing that it “could have caused fear and distress”.