Boyes Turner’s personal injury solicitors secured a £130,000 settlement in a slipping accident claim for a 66-year-old woman who suffered a fractured pelvis and psychological injury in a fall at her local Lidl. Supermarket spillage leads to slipping injury Our client slipped on salad cream that had been spilled on the floor of the supermarket aisle where she was shopping. She fell and landed on her left hip and immediately felt severe pain in her left leg. She shouted for help and her daughter and another customer came to her assistance. The accident was reported to the supermarket staff and she was taken by ambulance to hospital. She was admitted to hospital, where X-rays confirmed that she had suffered a displaced intertrochanteric fracture of the neck of the left femur (broken pelvis at the top of her thigh bone). She underwent surgery to pin the fracture with a cephalomedullary nail, and remained an inpatient in hospital for five days. She developed a severe, painful trochanteric bursitis (inflammation of the fluid-filled sac which cushions the side of the hip) over the operation site. She also developed a mixed depressive and anxiety disorder psychological injury. Impact of physical and psychological injuries on home, work and family life Before the slipping accident, our client had a medical history of polymyositis (chronic muscle inflammation) but she was usually independently mobile and pain-free, able to work, and fully independent in activities of daily living. Since the accident she has been reliant on a walking aid and needs to be accompanied by her husband or family when walking outdoors. She suffers pain on prolonged standing and can no longer kneel, bend or squat. Her disability has impaired her ability to return to her previous household and gardening activities, care for her disabled daughter and grandchild or provide support for her elderly mother. Our client’s injury impaired her ability to return fully to her part-time work as a post office manager. After an unsuccessful attempted phased return to work, she accepted redundancy and subsequently has not been able to work. Slipping injury claim leads to funded rehabilitation and £130,000 settlement We notified the defendant supermarket and their insurer of our client’s slipping injury claim arising from their employees’ negligent failure to prevent, clean up or provide warnings about the slipping hazard and their failure to protect our client from the foreseeable risk of injury. The defendant admitted liability (responsibility) for our client’s injury. We secured the insurer’s cooperation in prioritising our client’s rehabilitation and recovery. This enabled us to instruct a professional case manager to assess and report on our client’s immediate needs. Our client received physiotherapy, steroid injections, and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for her psychological symptoms funded directly by the insurer under the Rehabilitation Code. We prepared a schedule of our client’s loss which we served on the defendant together with supporting medical experts’ reports from consultants in trauma, orthopaedic surgery and psychiatry, and statements from family members relating to our client’s need for care. Settlement negotiations resulted in a £130,000 settlement, without the need for court proceedings. If you have been seriously injured in a fall or slipping accident caused by the negligence of an employer, business or public facility, and you would like to find out more about funded rehabilitation or making a claim, you can talk to one of our experienced solicitors, free and confidentially, by contacting us.
