By Nick Parr

Mr K is a retired gentleman approaching his 70th birthday. To keep himself active and to make a contribution to the community Mr K had a small part time job working as a verger to his local church. Mr K’s duties included the performance of small maintenance and repair tasks within the church. In particular on a number of occasions he was asked to clean the church’s Oriel window which was quite high up on the church.

Unfortunately the church did not provide Mr K with the proper facilities and support to enable him to safely reach up to clean the Oriel window. In fact he was left to use a small domestic ladder and in due course the inevitable happened; Mr K was up the ladder struggling to clean the Oriel window when the ladder slipped from underneath him and he fell.

Mr K sustained a bad shoulder injury and life has not been the same since. What should have been a pleasant and well deserved retirement has been marred by constant pain and restriction in his shoulder.

Unfortunately the church disputed any liability for Mr K’s injuries and therefore we commenced a County Court action on Mr K’s behalf. Eventually, having received advice from their solicitors, the church paid a useful compensation payment to Mr K.

It is always important to remember that whoever is employing us and however casual the employment might seem to be, any employer has an absolute duty to ensure that it is operating a safe system of work and is not putting its employees at an unnecessary risk of sustaining an injury.

All that the church would have had to have done in this case was to have bought a secure ladder or a small scaffolding so as to have prevented Mr K from sustaining injury.

If you would like free, confidential legal advice about an accident at work injury please call us on 0800 3164434.