01
Feb

Mr H came to Clear Law about the skin condition he had developed after being exposed to harmful oil at work. He had worked for the company for years and had only thought about making a claim after they had made him redundant. He told us that he recalled first linking the condition to his working conditions approximately 2.5 years previously.

As you only have 3 years to issue proceedings before your claim becomes statute barred we issued a claim form straight away to try and get him some protection and sent a letter of claim to his employers.

When we received his medical records it came to light that there had actually been an investigation some 4 years and 2 months previously into the cause of his condition by Occupational Health and as a result working practices regarding the oil had changed. Mr H had been mistaken on how long it had been as the years had passed so quickly.

We were confident on liability and so pushed on but the Defendant grabbed hold of the limitation issue and would not let go. They were adamant that the claim was statute barred because of Mr. H’s ‘date of knowledge’ and were not willing to consider settlement.

Limitation was decided at a preliminary hearing. We did not dispute that Mr. H knew that his condition was linked to work outside of the three year limitation period but we were going to ask the court to use their discretion to allow his claim to continue.

In deciding this the Judge will look at all the circumstances of the case and whether it would be just and reasonable for the case to proceed. They will also look at whether the Defendant has been unfairly prejudiced by the passage of time and could not be expected to fairly defend the claim.

The Defendants disclosed to us all manner of strange documentation from the last 10 years but claimed that all the documentation regarding the investigation and the claim was no longer in their possession. They said that they had a 3 year destruction policy on documents and the ones they had given to us, which were completely irrelevant to the issues, were only kept because they were mislaid in a box.

The Judge did not accept this. He said it was clear they did keep documentation but had been selective about what they disclosed. He said that after Mr. H first came to Clear Law for help there was no delay. The Defendants were notified of the claim straight away and a claim form was issued immediately. In his view there had been no prejudiced and he allowed Mr. H’s case to continue.

Within two weeks of the hearing we had an admission of liability and Mr. H ultimatley received £11,000 in compensation.

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