Injured roofer seeks justice with help of Kirkcaldy Solicitors

Andrew Wotherspoon was sub-contracted for a roofing job by a building company when the scaffolding gave way.

“I was up a two-storey roof walking across the scaffolding when it went down and took me with it. I hit the beam underneath, broke my ribs and burst my lung. 

“When I first got home, I needed a lot of help.”

Employer tries to cover up negligence

“The owner of the building company tried to get away with not logging the incident in the accident book and took me to the hospital to avoid Health and Safety being notified. By the time Health and Safety went along to inspect the site, they had taken the scaffolding down.”

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the accident and found the building company to be in breach of their duty of care to Mr Wotherspoon.

Employer at fault for faulty scaffolding

Mr Wotherspoon got in touch with our Kirkcaldy office about making a claim. Associate Ryan Smith visited Andrew at his home to find out more about what happened.

“I decided to make a claim because I knew the scaffolding hadn’t been put up right. It should have been put up by trained workers but instead they took shortcuts and I got injured as a result.”

“Companies have insurance in place for these types of things”

By law, companies must have Employers’ Liability (EL) insurance in place as soon as they become a company. In cases where an employee is injured or becomes ill because of work, the insurer will pay the compensation.

“After the accident, the owner was very abusive and rude to me. I had been working with him for more than 30 years but he seemed to take it very personally when I made a claim and tried to intimidate me out of going ahead.

“At the end of the day, that’s why companies have insurance in place. It is there to compensate workers if they are injured at work and the insurance companies deal with it. Instead, his attitude was that he would fight me all the way.”

Court action to secure compensation

Our Kirkcaldy personal injury lawyers proceeded with the claim but there were no offers forthcoming from the insurers. We therefore raised the case in court to force their hand and received an offer for £12,000 about 6 weeks later, which Mr Wotherspoon accepted.

“The service was great, there were no problems at all and the whole process was really easy.”