Elbow Injury Compensation

Is it possible for me to claim elbow injury compensation following an accident in which I slipped on a grape in a supermarket?

Eoin P. Campbell, LL.B., Solicitor

Editor in Chief

Eoin P. Campbell

You may be entitled to claim elbow injury compensation for slipping on a grape if it can be proven that your accident was caused by a breach of the supermarket’s duty of care. All supermarkets have a legal responsibility to provide their customers with a safe and clean working environment. However, their duty of care is not absolute and if it is shown that the accident occurred when staff members would not have had “reasonable” enough time to remove the hazard, they could not be deemed at fault.

You should have completed a number of procedures before pursuing your claim for elbow injury compensation. The first would have been to have your injury treated by a medical professional immediately after your accident occurred. Even if first aid was offered at the scene, you should still have seen your GP or visited the nearest Accident and Emergency department in order to have had your injury noted in your medical history.

Another useful procedure you should have undertaken would have been to collect the details of any witnesses to your accident. You should also have had your accident recorded in the shop’s “Accident Report Book”. To determine how long the grape had been on the ground for and to establish the efforts taken by staff to remove it, it would have been advantageous to have accessed images recorded by the shop’s CCTV.

If you have not carried out all of these procedures, however, you may not be disqualified from making an elbow injury compensation claim. By seeking the assistance of an experienced solicitor, he or she could guide you through the procedures that you need to take and can collect witness details and access the CCTV footage on your behalf.

A solicitor can also determine whether or not an offer of elbow injury compensation from the negligent party’s insurance company accurately reflects your injury and the way it has affected your life. Such offers are made when the negligent party admits liability and their insurers wish cut costs by offering an amount to a vulnerable person that most likely would not factor in all of the details needed that would make for a higher settlement, i.e. the amount that you are entitled too.

No two cases are exactly the same, even when the circumstances and injuries sustained are similar. Each claim should be assessed by its own individual merits and if you feel that you have a potential claim, you would be well advised to speak with a solicitor at the first practical moment.