Injuries can be incurred due to variety of situations during the course of a person’s employment. This could include a lack of general training, improper manual handling, faulty work equipment, or a lack of personal protective equipment.
However, what if you were injured not just simply due to the above scenarios, but during a task that by nature was deemed to be risky/dangerous? Does it then become your fault for agreeing to undertake such a hazardous task? Does this mean that you can’t make a claim for compensation? The answer to this is, not necessarily.
Even if you consent to being put into a dangerous scenario as part of your job role, your employer still has a duty of care towards you, to take action to keep you safe and prevent a foreseeable accident from occurring. If they have not made a reasonable attempt to do this, it may mean they have breached this duty.
The above is particularly applicable to emergency services workers, who are subject to a dangerous environment on a day-to-day basis. However, it is still the employers’ responsibility to ensure that their employees are adequately trained to carry out the required tasks safely, that they are competent and capable of doing so and that they have suitable equipment to do so. If an injury occurred due to a failure of doing this, they could be held liable.
There is, in general, a higher risk of accidents occurring in such professions and so it is important to ensure that these hazards are reduced as much as possible.
If you have been involved in such an accident at work, and believe that your employer has possibly not done all they could to prevent it from occurring, then speak to our experts regarding making a claim.
