Accidents In The Home (Where You Are A Tenant)

Where you sustain injury in an accident in your home and you are a tenant, should the injury you sustained in the accident in the home have resulted from a defect to the premises (i.e. your home) then the landlord is potentially liable for the accident and injuries sustained should they have either been aware of the defect concerned in your home or should have known about it in all of the circumstances.

Accidents Where You Are A Visitor Or A Trespasser In Another Person's Home/Premises

Where you suffer injury in an accident as a visitor to another person's home/premises, or even as a trespasser on them, then the occupier of the home/premises (defined as the person(s) who have physical control over the home/premises) is potentially liable for the injuries caused by the accident. They owe a duty of care in relation to the home/premises to both visitors and trespassers to prevent accidents by ensuring that both are reasonably safe whilst in the home/premises. The following apply in relation to the occupiers duty of care:-

• Danger warnings or barriers are acceptable if effective in preventing accidents and injuries in the home/premises

• The occupier must make allowance for children to be less careful than adults in the home/premises. This is because an unthreatening object to an adult may be dangerous allurement to a child and thereby cause accidents and injuries. Hence, where they know that children will be entering the home/premises or likely to get onto them, then to prevent accidents and injuries the home/premises must be made reasonably safe for a child of that age. Nevertheless, in certain circumstances, the courts have held that the parents of the child were liable for accidents and the injuries sustained for not exercising greater control over them and preventing the accident and injuries from arising.

• Where accidents and the injury sustained are foreseeable then the occupier is liable even if the way in which the accident and injury occurred is not foreseeable.

• Where persons entering the home/premises do so as part of a trade, then they must guard against any special risks of accident and injury associated with their trade.

• Where an accident and injury occurred as a result of work carried out by an independent contractor working on the home/premises, then the contractor will be liable for accidents and injuries where it was reasonable for the occupier to entrust the work to them, and that the occupier had taken reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the contractor was competent and (if the nature of the work allows) that the work was being properly done.

• The occupiers duty of care towards trespassers in the home/premises only exists if the occupier is aware of the danger of accidents and injuries posed by the hazard or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists, that the occupier knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that a trespasser is in the vicinity of the hazard concerned or that he may come into its vicinity, and the risk of accident and injury is one which in all of the circumstances the occupier would reasonably be expected to offer them some protection from. "Reasonable grounds to believe" has been held to mean that the occupier had actual knowledge of relevant facts which provided grounds for such a belief.

The Accident Solicitors, the brand, is part of Antrobus Solicitors, a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Details of the professional rules which regulate solicitors can be found at the following website address: http://www.rules.sra.org.uk

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