Accident claims in the construction and manufacturing industries are relatively common in the UK, with many injuries arising after workers have fallen from height. The Health and Safety Executive has made a point of addressing the issue of working safely at height, yet many companies continue to ignore their legal obligations by failing to implement effective health and safety standards.

This week, Klarius UK Limited, of Staffordshire, was fined 8,000 and ordered to pay costs of 1,892 at Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. This states: “Where work is carried out at height, every employer shall take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, any person falling a distance liable to cause personal injury.”

Brian Derbyshire, a 61-year-old of Cheadle, Staffordshire, was carrying out regular maintenance on a machine used to make exhaust pipes on the 18th of August 2009. The job required Mr Derbyshire to ascend a scaffold tower before stooping down to check the machine for an oil leak. Mr Derbyshire lost his balance somehow after he tried to stand up and fell 2 metres to the ground below.

Mr Derbyshire survived the incident, however he was left with serious injuries that included a fractured vertebra – an injury that is normally associated with whiplash claims.

In many injury claims cases – including this one, which involve falls from a height, Mr Derbyshire’s injuries were enough to prevent him from working for over 6 weeks. It was found following a subsequent Health and Safety Executive investigation that Klarius UK Limited had neglected to install a guardrail on the edge of the scaffold tower because it was feared that doing so would limit access to the machine. In this case, a guardrail may have prevented Mr Derbyshire’s fall.

Speaking after the court hearing, Health and Safety Executive inspector, Lynne Boulton, said: “Barry Derbyshire did nothing wrong but, as a result of this fall, he’s been left with life-changing injuries. The company had a clear lack of appreciation of risk”.

Ms Boulton added “If Klarius UK Limited had used the right equipment and ensured there were guardrails on the scaffolding, it [the accident] would never have happened. Falls from height were responsible for almost 400 major injuries in the West Midlands in 2008/09, with 78 in Staffordshire alone.” Despite the efforts of the Health and Safety Executive, obviously many companies in the UK are not fully protecting their workers from falls due to them not taking their responsibilities seriously.

Nathan Payne has previously written articles for First4Lawyers – No Win No Fee lawyers and medical negligence cases for medical solicitors.

Personal injury claims are based on the law of negligence, which entails a duty of care existed between a claimant and defendant, that the duty was violated and that the violation caused the damage or injury in question.

Clinical and medical negligence claims work on the same basic principles, with the exception that doctors can escape liability if they can be said to have reached the standard of a responsible body of medical opinion – in other words, if their actions conform to what is normal, they will not usually be found negligent in a court of law.

The National Health Service is often named in personal injury claims involving patients who have incurred injury or illness whilst having an operation in hospital; poor nursing and surgical errors etc are often mentioned in such cases. A recent event involving a man who knifed his grandfather to death has further increased questions over how much the NHS can be held liable in personal injury claims.

On the 24th of July 2009, 30-year-old William Barnard grabbed a kitchen knife, left his flat and walked a short distance to the home of his grandparents, John and Mabel McGrath. Mr McGrath opened the door to his grandson, who proceeded to plunge the knife into his body. William, a paranoid schizophrenic, killed his grandfather after stabbing the 81-year-old no less than 56 times; Mrs McGrath was also injured during the attack. In June, William was committed to Rampton high security hospital.

Judge Michael Stokes QC, upon sentencing William, said that it was a “matter of grave concern” that the NHS had missed several occasions to send William to hospital prior to his grandfather’s death.

Now, solicitors acting on behalf of William’s mother, Kath Barnard, have called for an independent inquiry into why the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS trust failed to section William despite repeated requests by his family in the build-up to Mr McGrath’s death.

It has emerged that a specialist NHS AO team, tasked with ensuring that psychiatric patients remain out of hospital, needed to visit William every 2 weeks, however the AO only gave William his fortnightly injection of anti-psychosis drug Depixol in December 2008 and saw him just 4 times in the following 6 month period.

An AO medical team had even visited William on the morning of Mr McGrath’s death but failed to act despite observing blood stains on the door handle. William’s family had warned NHS experts of his deteriorating condition some thirty times prior to Mr McGrath’s death.

This content was provided by Nathan Payne who has previously worked on articles for injury lawyers and no win no fee solicitors based on cases involving whiplash claims and medical negligence amongst others.