Restaurant Waiter Injury Compensation

Can I claim restaurant waiter injury compensation for a scalding injury? The head chef tripped on the uneven kitchen floor and dropped a pot of boiling stock which severely scalded my legs.

Eoin P. Campbell, LL.B., Solicitor

Editor in Chief

Eoin P. Campbell

A claim for restaurant waiter injury compensation can be made against the restaurant owner’s liability insurance policy if the accident can be attributed to his negligence. In this case, it would appear that the owner may have been negligent for a failure to maintain the restaurant to an appropriate standard, or to ensure that the kitchen was safe.

A scalding injury can be highly serious, cause considerable pain and discomfort, and even permanent scarring. Burns and scalding injuries Do not always require emergency hospital treatment, however if you did not seek medical attention for your injuries and have them recorded in your medical history, your injury might not be considered to be severe enough for a restaurant waiter injury compensation claim to be justified.

In a kitchen where knives and other dangerous utensils need to be used frequently, it is vital that there are no trip hazards. Hot stoves, ovens and pans of liquids make a kitchen a particularly dangerous environment. Any trip hazard in a kitchen has potential to cause a fatal injury and the uneven floor should have been addressed by your employer as part of the initial risk assessment before the kitchen was opened or during the regular risk assessments that restaurant owners are obliged to perform under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act (2005).

While your employer may have been negligent due to a failure to ensure the workplace was safe and risks were kept to the minimum practical level, you must still be able to establish and prove that the accident occurred as a direct result of that negligence in order to claim compensation for an injury to a waiter in a restaurant.

It would be beneficial to your claim to take photographs of the hazard which caused the accident, as these can be used as evidence to support your claim. If there were any witnesses to the accident who could provide a testimony that the main cause of the accident was the uneven floor, this too would help to make sure that your restaurant waiter injury compensation claim will be successful.

However, before you make the decision about whether to make a compensation claim for an injury to a waiter in a restaurant you should speak with a personal injury solicitor. It is important to confirm that you are actually entitled to make a restaurant waiter injury compensation claim before submitting an application for assessment to the Injuries Board Ireland, In case your employer´s refusal to accept liability for your injuries develops into an issue at work.