The Car Park owners denied responsibility when the client twisted her ankle in their lot
In this week’s case we acted for a client who, having parked her car in a car park, twisted her ankle and fell as she was leaving the area.
A claim was submitted to the owners of the carpark who initially denied that they owned it, but we got hold of documents that showed that they maintained it. The owners then tried to get out of paying by arguing that it had a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance of the carpark, and that it could not be expected to identify every defect the instant that it arose.
Whilst the car park owners had a point, that they could not spot every defect as soon as it arose, the fact that they were unable to say just which areas of its land it had inspected and what maintenance work had been undertaken, made it clear that they did not demonstrate any reasonable and effective system it operated.
“Places which have high footfall should have a clear inspection regime so that potholes and other defects can be identified quickly and appropriately repaired. It is simply not good enough to wait for an accident to occur."Louise Atkinson Personal injury and accident executive
The case went to trial and the Judge agreed with us, and the client was compensated for their pain and suffering.
Louise Atkinson from Thompsons’ Newcastle Office commented: “Places such as carparks which have high footfall should have a clear inspection regime so that potholes and other defects can be identified quickly and appropriately repaired. It is simply not good enough to wait for an accident to occur. Fortunately our client has made a good recovery but she was lucky and a fall of this kind could have led to much longer lasting injuries”.
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