Government Ministers and
insurers declaim the “compensation culture” and the Government promises to cut
through “Health & Safety” red tape which we are told is stifling
business. But there is no “compensation
culture” in this country, as the
Government’s own studies have long shown.
And there are very good social reasons why employees should be able to
work in a safe place of work and not have to face avoidable accidents to the
detriment of their own health.
| Workers are entitled to a safe place to work. |
Lisa’s case is a straight
forward example. She was working as a
dental nurse in a busy surgery where her working conditions were obstructed
underfoot with pipes and wiring leading from the patient’s chair to suction
equipment. Each time she passed the
chair she had to either kick the wires under the chair or step over them to
avoid tripping. On the first occasion
she forgot to do so, her foot was caught
under her and she fell heavily upon her ankle.
The employer immediately
changed the layout of the surgery (getting in an engineer to do it the very
same afternoon!).
Lisa was entitled obviously
to compensation, but calculation of this
was complicated because she had already suffered an undisplaced hairline
fracture of the same ankle playing football with her son six months previously.
That became clear when the orthopaedic doctor to whom we sent her for a medical
report examined her previous x-rays. Her ankle had troubled her but she had not
known of the fracture.
Lisa in fact needed
reconstructive surgery but the medical evidence was that this surgery would
have been necessary anyway because of the original injury which the fall in the
dental clinic had just aggravated.
So although Lisa recovered
compensation for six months additional pain and suffering following the clinic
accident and her loss of income following that accident and also following the
reconstructive surgery, her total claim
was valued at £3,000.00 and it settled for that sum. The insurers paid her legal costs in full.
Under Government proposals, because Lisa’s claim was for less than
£5,000.00, notwithstanding its
complexity, she would not be entitled to
be represented by lawyers unless she pays for them herself out of her
compensation. (The proposals are that
the “Small Claims” case threshold is increased from £1,000 to £5,000). The
likelihood of course is that faced with an insurer refusing to pay anything
without a medical report, Lisa, a young working mother on limited income, would
have just not bothered.
