Personal Injury Law Scotland

If you slipped on ice while at work or somewhere in Scotland and were hurt, you may be eligible for compensation. As the temperature drops during the winter, it is unfortunately common for people to fall on ice. If the landowner or occupier hasn't done enough to lower the risk of slipping, there's a higher chance that someone will get hurt.

The NHS Litigation Reform report, published by The Westminster Health and Social Care Committee earlier this year, suggested implementing a no-fault medical negligence compensation scheme in England.

The purpose of no-fault compensation schemes is that there is no requirement for negligence to be proven before compensation is paid out for injuries. The cause of the negligence must still be put forward, although proving individual fault is not required.

This type of model had previously been considered in Scotland - firstly in 2009, and then again in 2011 when a "no-blame" compensation scheme based on the Swedish model was discussed. It was proposed that compensation (up to the value of £100,000) for harm that could have been avoided due to medical treatment would be allowed, however, treatment received from independent contractors such as private hospitals, GPs, dentists, pharmacists etc would not be allowed within this proposed scheme.

A Freedom of Information request (FOI) showed that between the years of 2010 and 2020, the Nottingham University Hospitals Trust settled 10 stillbirth clinical negligence claims. Around 2,500 babies are stillborn every year, with 75 of those said to be attributed to clinical negligence. An average of £29,000 was paid out per case, as well as £286,000 in legal fees overall. Data also discovered that Trusts across the country are paying £29.8 milllion in damages and £34.8 million in legal fees over 758 medical negligence cases.

Even the most established business can fall into financial difficulty, and this was recently witnessed with the sudden and high-profile collapse of Britain’s oldest travel company, Thomas Cook. It highlighted the dramatic fallout that occurs when a widely-used business becomes insolvent. While much of the media coverage centred around job losses and helping the 150,000 customers stranded overseas, there are travellers who may have suffered an injury on holiday and are left wondering whether they can claim compensation.

Recent analysis from Sustrans Scotland discovered that children in the 20 per cent most deprived areas are more than three times as likely to be involved in a road traffic accident when travelling on foot or by bike than those in the 20 per cent least deprived areas in Scotland.