Personal Injury - Who is at Fault?

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Personal Injury -Who is at Fault ?
Advice on personal injury from Experts at www.expertanswers.co.uk
We had a question from a lady who’d tripped over, in the Pub as it happens, but she wasn’t drunk, she was tea-total. She’s gone out with her Family for a meal.
She tripped over and she fell, and she hurt her shoulder and there’s no doubt about it, it’s a nasty injury for her, she has frozen shoulder which is not particularly pleasant.
Now, she wants to bring a personal injury claim. Now, she didn’t have frozen shoulder before she fell, and she now has got it.
There is no doubt at all that she tripped on a piece of torn carpet when she’d gone out for the meal with the family and the owners of the Hotel, the Pub, hold their hands up:
“Yes, we admit liability; we admit liability for the negligence of the ripped carpet causing the fall”.
However, their admission of liability is subject to two things, and if ever you are involved with a personal injury claim, these two words will crop up more and more.
The first one is called causation, a word that you’ll only ever hear used in the legal context, and the other one is called quantum. I’ll deal with quantum first because it’s the easiest, and it’s not like quantum physics, its quantum of damages.
Quantum is literally subject at hand which the claim is worth.
So we admit liability, and we’ll admit liability if it’s going to be a few thousand pounds, but we’re not going to admit liability if the woman is putting a claim in, the lady is putting a claim in for a hundred thousand pounds.
And then, we refer to causation, now causation, as I said earlier, is a word only used in the legal profession because I can’t think that it is particularly good English .
So, the Company is admitting liability subject to causation. What does causation mean? Causation means they will admit liability subject to someone proving that, that injury was caused by that negligence.
The fact that the lady has got frozen shoulder is not relevant. What she is going to have to prove, or what the Orthopaedic Surgeon is going to have to prove, is that condition was caused by that fall. And unless a Medical Expert can say, that condition was caused by that fall, the claim fails.
It’s unfortunate it’s caused; it’s the cause of the accident. Without that, the claim will fail. Hopefully, it won’t claim because the Orthopaedic Surgeon will be able to prove on the balance of liabilities, that’s more than 50%, that injury was caused by that accident.
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