Personal Injury Briefing – May 2021

S 2(2). of the Occupiers Liability Act 1957 sets out the persuasively simple proposition that an occupier owes a duty to take such care as is reasonable to see that its visitors are reasonably safe when using the premises for the purposes for which they are invited or permitted to be there. So far so familiar to a tort lawyer with the concept of reasonableness at its heart. Liability under the Act is however extremely complex and lack of familiarity with it and the cases that have interpreted it exposes lawyers to all sorts of pitfalls.

In this briefing the 1 Chancery Lane Personal Injury team consider some of the most common areas that pose difficulty. Henk Soede discusses what is meant by an occupier, who is a visitor and what happens when the claimant is present on the premises due to some sort of right. Robert Parkin looks at the extensions and restrictions to the duty of care contained in the other subsections of s. 2, including cases involving children and independent contractors, the relevance of warning signs and what happens when a visitor apparently willingly accepts a risk.

Henk and Robert are providing further training in this area in the 1 Chancery Lane Webinar series. On Thursday 10^th June at 1pm they will be giving training on Occupiers Liability – Reminder of the Basics. You can register for the webinar here or for further information about the education and training offered by members of 1 Chancery Lane please visit our website or contact Emma Williams, Marketing Manager on ewilliams@dekachambers.com.

Read the Personal Injury Briefing in full here.