Changes to Personal Injury Legislation
November 13th, 2012
Employees with legitimate compensation claims may find it more difficult to secure payouts due to changes to legislation, it has been warned.
Changes to health and safety rules and legislation now mean those employees putting forward a claim for compensation have to prove that their employer was directly responsible for their accident. The new tougher rules are designed to stamp out spurious claims, but some fear it could lead to fewer rights for those who have been genuinely injured and need compensation to maintain a quality of life.
The removal of the strict liability clause in current health and safety regulations - which states that employers are liable for any incident if health and safety rules have been breached - is designed to give “important reassurance to employers that they will be liable to pay compensation only when it can be proved that they have been negligent”, according to Conservative minister Matthew Hancock.
However, vice-chairman of the Personal Injuries Bar Association Andrew Ritchie QC, said the changes to the bill are “turning the clock back”.
Explaining his view he said: “Claims arising out of defective work equipment, including those by members of the armed forces, are obvious examples where an injured employee may face an all but impossible evidential burden. All of the relevant information will be in the employer’s possession, not the employee’s. That is why strict liability was imposed. The employer will be in control of the maintenance logs, the purchase receipts, and the machine itself. For the weeks after the accident the injured claimant will be lying in hospital. If the employer gets on and mends the machine, the evidence will be destroyed.”
In conclusion he claimed that employees in this specific situation would be forced to “have an engineer examine the machine to prove that the employer was at fault for letting the machine break down”.
The new bill will go through its second reading in the House of Lords this Wednesday (November 14th) and is expected to come up against opposition.