h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

About six months back a customer at a fit club we run at the rugby club broke her ankle. It was a nasty incident but I believe I acted professionally throughout. I knew her personally and kept in touch after although recently I have lost touch with her and her daughter who was present on the night of the accident. All communications were cordial and from the things they said explicitly and inplicitly it was clear they did not hold me responsible.

Last week the club received a solicitors letter claiming that the rugby clubs instructor (i.e. me)
1. had not made sure the area was safe
2. had instructed her to do something that was dangerous
3. had not provided proper supervision to avoid the accident.

Now even if our insurers choose not to contest her allegations of negligence on behalf of the club and sinply pony up the cash where do I stand?

Could she make further claims against me as an individual?

More importanly has she defamed my character. None of the claims she is makeing are true. Id be interested to know if her claims amount to slander and is it possible to cheaply file a counter claim inrespect of her unfounded assertions about my conduct?

A proper legal person will be along soon.

In the meantime -

"Could she make further claims against me as an individual?" If a claim has been settled via your employers, I would say no. This is why your employers have public liability insurance - if something happens to the public, the insurance company is liable.

Don't take this personally. As hurtful and insulting though the claims may be, it sounds like this is just an ambulance-chasing lawyer speaking. In Tony Soprano's words "It ain't personal, it's bizzness"

Further, you don't get legal aid for slander/defamation cases. If you wanted to pursue this, it would be expensive.

Point of order: if the defamatory statement is written/published, then it's libel, not slander (which is spoken word - with witnesses - only).

I'm sure if you consult a letter, a counter-threat to sue for libel will help to concentrate their minds.

RF

Letter? Lawyer!

RF

This raises some interesting questions ... it seems to me that after the initial incident everything was hunky-dory but then perhaps later someone (or an advert) has got her thinking that she can get an award for compensation. She's probably been told by the solicitors that it's standard procedure and it won't cause you any problems blah, blah, blah ...

Not enough people will have seen the letter to make it defamatory. So if she's seen it, her solicitor, you, your boss and maybe your solicitor, then there's no chance. If she published nonsense on a website, wrote to the local paper (and they for some stupid reason published it) then you could take action, and it would be down to her to defend her comments. You may have to show you'd lost something by her comments, so if everyone said 'what nonsense' then you would have no losses to claim for. IANAL! Just a few things I picked up working for the Beeb.

I don't know if she can sue you as well, but I know that as a dog walker if I am in charge of a dog that does something really horrible, any injured parties can sue me *and the owner* even if they weren't there. The owner would then have a case to sue me as well as they believe a professional dog walker would be a fit and proper person to leave their dog with. It would be unlikely to happen that way, but doesn't mean it won't.

Whether your club is the same situation as that, I couldn't say.

It definitely sounds like an ambulance-chaser.

I was shunted in the rear-end on a roundabout two and a half years ago, and I got a phone-call two and a half weeks ago offering to help me claim for whiplash.

How do your employers plan to react? And do you have witnesses to her original behaviour, and yours?

Ben

Are you *named personally* as the rugby club's instructor? That would certainly sound defamotory to me. Otherwise I don't think it's construed as defamotory. I presume you are seen as part of a claim against the *club* being their representative/employee?

I don't know if she could make further claims against you as a named individual though. But yes if she could, that would be very expensive, and risky, I doubt she would.

Hopefully the club are fully backing you internally, so even if some sort of settlement is arrived at for pragmatic reasons of cost..they know the truth of how you acted.

<>

do you have any witnesses that back up your version of events??

I wonder about the timing myself. You say you've recently lost contact with her and her daughter, and now she's suing. Could there be some bitterness about this loss of contact? Not that that answers your questions, it just occurred to me.

Deb

Some questions:

Firstly, how did she break her ankle?

Then on to the statements:

"1. had not made sure the area was safe"

Was the floor flat? Was she using some sort of step?

"2. had instructed her to do something that was dangerous"

Was the 'something' a standard fitness move which people do thousands of times a week with no problems at all?

"3. had not provided proper supervision to avoid the accident."

Was she in a class with many other people carrying out an exercise that everyone else was doing and that, presumably, you were demonstrating.

You could blind the solicitor with risk assessment techniques by showing that the exercise was not dangerous etc.

You can break an ankle just by walking along the street.

I'm a H&S officer at work, and if something like this happened to me (it hasn't yet: small company not dealing with the public) my first reaction would be to hope to b*****y that I've done a Risk Assessment.

Your club should/will have a H&S officer. S/he should/will have done a risk assessment for all activities done by the club, including your training sessions - and s/he should have recorded that, i.e. written down what they've considered, what hazards they have spotted and what they have done about them.

If you can get your hands on that paperwork, I would imagine this case is going to disappear pretty fast. My understanding (again, not as a lawyer) is that you need to take 'reasonable precautions' to avoid injury. A H&S analysis (and following any recommendations, obviously) is designed to cover yo' a** in exactly this kind of situation.

Gif

You need to take reasonable precautions. I written risk assessment isn't necessary, technically.

If the, presumed, exercise that was being done by the woman is done by people all over the world with no problems then it could be said that the exercise is safe enough to be done without any special precautions apart from showing the class how to do the exercise.

Also, did the woman have to sign something to agree to do fitness classes there?

Not everything has to be risk assessed to the nth degree and there is something called 'personal responsibility' that people seem to have forgotten.

Also, the fact that the woman did not blame Blicky (I assume that you Blicky) should go someway. Is there any written communications or anyone who can vouch for any verbal communications which said this.

I'd say that the moral of this is any one organising a coach session needs to:
1) be a qualified coach (that negates the comment about poor instruction)
2) have a written plan for the session (you can put a H&S check as one of the first points on the plan and tick it to indicate it was done; and the types of exercises done will show they are all typical).

Sad that this claim has come to happen because it can leave you defensive about apologising to people who have an accident in future in case that is see as admitting liability.

At least one fitness session I went to the instructor made you sign a disclaimer to the effect that you were fit with no medical issues.

Describe what happened so we can assess the implications,