Slipping case settles for £150,000

Brendan Kearney was instructed by a client who sustained serious injuries following a slip that occurred in a supermarket.

The client instructed that the on the day of the accident it had been snowing and the entrance to the supermarket was wet and had not been properly secured, which our client felt amounted to a hazard. The client was advised from the outset that in cases of this nature the evidential burden is on the owners of the premises to provide evidence that they had a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance in place to prevent the risk of such accidents happening to their customers.

Liability was unsurprisingly denied by the insurance company for the supermarket and proceedings were issued in the High Court. After several applications to the Court on behalf of our client, we were able to obtain documentation in the form of the supermarkets inspect records and risk assessments. Our expert consultant engineer who inspected these documents and the accident locus deemed the system which had been put in place by the supermarket was not adequate and that the supermarket was indeed liable for our client’s accident and subsequent injury due to their negligence and breach of duty in failing to provide safe premises for the general public.

Liability was denied until the morning of trail when settlement negotiations began and a substantial figure of £150,000 was accepted by our client, which took into consideration the lifelong issues she would have with her leg and knee and also a significant loss of earnings claims.