Compensation Culture gone barmy

Yesterday, I received a piece of SPAM email which read as follows:

"Your client is injured following a slip on a floor.

Your client was possibly inebriated, or running or wearing high heels, the defendants have denied all liability because your claimant didn’t take reasonable care for his own safety.

They also claim that their client has a thorough and monitored cleaning regime.

Usually in these situations you would not proceed as the case is weak.

However if FloorSlip Ltd could prove that the flooring was inherently unsafe and unfit for purpose (by failing to meet HSE guidelines), then we can demonstrate that the defendants have been negligent in their “Duty of Care”.

We impartially test floors to determine if a surface is unsafe using equipment approved by the Health & Safety Executive."

Was it a joke? Apparently not. There are still people out there prepared to advise clients to indulge in absurd speculative litigation. Solicitors whose clients have drunkenly toppled to their doom, or gone skating in high heels. No doubt clients who have been referred by claims management outfits. Maybe the same people who sent me texts telling me I could claim £3,750 in damages following an unnamed member of my family unprovokedly driving our car into a wall.

I do wonder if litigation solicitors would be a load better off if they dumped the crooked intermediaries and undertook less,but higher quality work. This strategy certainly works for those of us in the property field. You get more time to deal with matters properly and are able to use your fees to fund your office rather than someone else's.

Going, going, gone...

After some soul searching, I have decided to dispose of my collection of Home Information Pack Keyrings. That I have such a collection may be a surprise to anyone reading this, but as part of the razzmatazz about this not very much lamented hindrance to Conveyancing in England and Wales, I was sent 100 of them by the Government.

I have managed to lose a few of them, and some have unpleasant marks from having been thrown at pictures of John Prescott, Ruth Kelly and Eric Pickles, but the rest have been listed on eBay under this link here.

To date (31 May) bidding has been brisk, and has settled at 1p. But there is still 5 days to go.

I would hate anyone to lose out on this amazing opportunity to secure a part of our recent legal history, even if one which most people would rather completely forget.

Gherkin Ghoulishness

It appears to be payback time for humanity, and particularly for vegetarians, as a plague of cucumber and other salad vegetable related death stalks Europe. Resisting a call to modify our national fruit and vegetable health message to: "Five-a-day, but this could be your last", the Health Protection Agency has instead limited itself to warning people to wash, peel or cook salad vegetables.

This may be nature's way of saying that veganism really is an evolutionary cul-de-sac, but it is more likely to be another by-product of the unrestrained industrialisation of agriculture.

Our cheap food is of course picked and processed by underpaid and heavily exploited farmworkers, whose conditions of service owe little to any concept of rural bliss.

Help for Criminal Law practitioners

We don't often stray outside our comfort zone of property related law, but recent event (or maybe non-event) (not the Royal Wedding) has given us an idea which may be of help to practitioners of Criminal Law.

It can be hard when seeking to advise someone who is under suspicion of doing away with an acquaintance of whom no trace can be found. To maintain that an alleged victim is alive and well can be difficult, particularly if there is circumstantial evidence against your client.

But if your client is absolutely resolute in their protestations of innocence, and there is not too much blood on their clothes, it is surely right to investigate all possibilities; and one such is that the supposed victim has been raptured.

21 May 2011 was supposed to have been the day that the righteous were gathered up into the fluffy cotton wool environment of heaven, according to eccentric preacher Mr Harold Camping. Although Mr Camping seems to be around still, and has revised his predictions of a global apocalypse to 21 October, as one does; it is by no means impossible that the preacher, who has a website fuilled with intolerant ranting, has not fulfilled all of the requirements of righteousness and so has been left behind, unsaved.

Others, more worthy than Mr Camping or the writer, may of course have gone.