Accident claim firm extends to Scotland
It has been revealed that a no win no fee claims firm is allowing Scottish personal injury claimants easy access to an accident claims service.
The group, established successfully since 1993 in the UK, has launched a web page dedicated to Scottish injury victims and increased service capacity.
Statistics from 2008/09 show that an estimated 104,000 people in Scotland believed they were suffering from a work-related illness and, during the same period, an estimated 3.1 million working days were lost in Scotland due to work accident claims and work-related ill health.
Adam Rhodes, commercial director of the group, stated: “We have been working with Scottish law firms to ensure we cover the whole of Scotland. Scottish law is different to English law, so the new web page is designed to help people who are unsure of how the legal process works and to answer questions on how they can claim the compensation to which they are entitled.”
He added: “They may feel overwhelmed by the idea of claiming against their employer or a large organisation such as a company or local authority.”
Builder death
In related news it has emerged that a Polish labourer working on a Scottish building died when he fell from the site.
The man,55, fell down an ungraded smoke extraction shaft in a block of flats in Dundee. The incident has been labelled as a ‘public scandal’ by the local sheriff.
Sheriff Richard Davidson ruled that the workers death was “entirely foreseeable and entirely preventable” adding that those responsible should be “utterly ashamed” of their actions.
The accident happened when the victim fell nearly 10ft down the shaft on the site at Arbroath Road, Dundee, on 29 May, 2008.
Last June, the construction company was fined £5,000 at Dundee Sheriff Court after admitting breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act by failing to provide a guard rail or barrier at the shaft on the construction site.
The director of the company who was acting as site manager, was fined £4,000 after pleading guilty to breaching the same act.
In his determination, following a fatal accident inquiry into the man’s death, Sheriff Davidson said that he “died as a result of an accident which was entirely foreseeable and entirely preventable. That is a public scandal and those responsible[...] should be utterly ashamed of their failures.”
His judgment continued: “There is no doubt that the smoke extraction shaft down which he fell was unguarded and constituted an obvious risk which should and could have been eliminated.”
Updated on 4/13/2010