Personal Injury Claims

RULE 4.228 OF THE INSOLVENCY RULES 1986

NOTICE TO THE CREDITORS OF AN INSOLVENT COMPANY OF THE RE-USE OF A PROHIBITED NAME

THE HARLEY MEDICAL CENTRE LIMITED
(Company Number 01728619)
I, Melvin Braham, of 11 Queen Anne Street, London W1G 9LJ was a Director of the above named company on the day it went into administration. I give notice that I am acting and intend to continue to act in one or more of the ways to which Section 216(3) of the Insolvency Act 1986, would apply if the above-maned Company were to go into insolvent liquidation connection with or for the purposes of, the carrying on of the whole or substantially the whole of the business of the above-named Company under the following name: Aesthetic and Cosmetic Surgery Limited trading as the Harley Medical Group

Did you receive a notice from Mr. Melvin Braham, Mr. Pierre Guillot or Ms. Louise Braham, in the terms set out above?

Are you an Irish client of The Harley Medical Group, with PIP breast implants?

What is this notice, you ask?

Read on.

The Insolvency Rules

Under the Rules contained in the UK Insolvency (Amendment) Rules 2007, directors of companies such as The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. are obliged to publish a prescribed notice in the London Gazette

and

to notify every creditor of the company whose name and address is known [to the director] or is ascertainable by him on the making of such enquiries as are reasonable in the circumstances.

The Harley Medical Group was a trade mark of The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. of 11 Queen Anne St. in London.

The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. went into administration in the UK on 9th November 2012. The administrators sold some or all of the business of The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. to another company, Aesthetic and Cosmetic Surgery Ltd.

The “Harley” Notice

On 7th December 2012, Mr. Melvin Braham, Mr. Pierre Guillot and Ms. Louise Braham, all directors of The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. and also directors of Aesthetic and Cosmetic Surgery Ltd., published a notice in the London Gazette in the form seen HERE.

The Liquidation of The Harley Medical Centre Ltd t/a The Harley Medical Group

Subsequently, as it happened, The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. went into insolvent liquidation. (It also changed its name to THMC Realisations (2012) Ltd.)

Clearly, the “Harley” notice was intended to comply with the terms of the UK Insolvency (Amendment) Rules 2007 (seen HERE).

Did you receive the “Harley” notice?

McGarr Solicitors would like to hear from every Irish client of The Harley Medical Centre Ltd. to check the extent of compliance of Mr. Melvin Braham, Mr. Pierre Guillot and Ms. Louise Braham with the UK Insolvency (Amendment) Rules 2007.

EMAIL US!

We look forward to hearing from you by email at info@mcgarrsolicitors.ie

Modern people, sportsmen/women excepted, are most at risk of serious injury when travelling on the road. The energy bundled in a motor car, or other vehicle, is considerable. If that energy is suddenly blocked, which is what happens in a typical car accident, it must go somewhere and, unfortunately, it sometimes goes into us. Then you are injured and the nature and extent of that injury is determined by chance.

Make no mistake; as a society, we have planned these accidents. Otherwise we would prohibit such forms of travel. Instead, we build lots of roads and we promote the use and sale of motor cars.

In this sense, it is a misnomer, to call these events “accidents”.

Take a circus, or theatre, knife-thrower.  If the knife thrower “accidentally” throws the knife and stabs his (typically) lovely assistant in the heart, we expect that the police will arrest him and that he will be convicted of a crime. We reject the idea that this is an accident. His implied position, that his only fault lies in that last unintended lapse in his wrist, is rejected.

We know that he arranged everything and we are reasonable in considering that, perhaps, or even probably, he had no lapse whatever in his wrist and intended the injury/death.

It is, among other things, this knowledge of a social responsibility for road traffic accidents that we see expressed in the fact of a Government “4^th Road Safety Strategy” or that the EU is holding a “Road Transport Safety Conference on Serious Injuries” in Dublin.

It is a fact, and we should know it, that, as a society, we can suffer mental aberration on these matters. (“Mental aberration” is a polite term for madness).

I do not just mean politicians’ proposals for Irish farmers to be permitted to drink and drive.

I do not just mean politicians claiming that workers allegedly neglecting road safety be allowed to get on with the job and be freed from “red tape”.

I mean it is a form of mental illness, hypocrisy certainly, to plan for injuries to happen and to claim, in the Constitution, that the State will vindicate the person (meaning bodily integrity) of citizens (and others) and then to establish a statutory body (the Injuries Board, a.k.a., the Personal Injuries Assessment Board) (and maintain it) that seeks to ensure the lowest possible level of success in delivering compensation to those injured persons, and to go further; to shrink the window of opportunity for the injured person to effectively make a claim for that compensation to the inadequate time of two years.

In fact, to term all of this “madness” is politeness.

We should remember that we were not always as “mad” as we currently are. We have a “legal system” that includes a cohort of persons intent on overcoming the State’s lunacy.When it comes to car accidents solicitors (and barristers) are those working for the common good. The persons who intentionally hobbled them in doing what they try to do, namely, vindicate the bodily integrity of road accident and other personal injury victims, cannot be categorised as mad. They are simply working against the common good.

The Injuries Board is also called the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. It was established by statute in 2003.

Every person wishing to recover compensation for a personal injury inflicted by wrongdoers must first apply to the Injuries Board for an assessment of the value of the claim.

The Board has issued an article today (26^th March 2013) and Patricia Byron, Chief Executive, went on Morning Ireland for an interview.

The upshot of the article and the interview is this; personal injury claims are increasing and this is bad.

This sounds like the resurrection of the jibe about “Compo Culture”. That jibe was the cry of persons who wished to deny to injured persons their rightful compensation when they were injured by the wrongful acts of others.

Those persons were successful in their campaigning because they had political friends in high places. The establishment of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board was one of their achievements.

Another was the shortening of the time within which an injured person had to issue proceedings before becoming statue barred from doing so. The time was shortened from three years to two years. (One politician wanted to drop it to one year).

Now the Injuries Board is asserting something is happening that it says is undesirable; that people are being educated to make claims for personal injury.

This is a surprising development. The Personal Injuries Assessment Board has a budget for advertising. Any reasonable person would think that it was part of the job of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board to educate injured persons to make claims for personal injury and to do so to the Board. Clearly, the Board does not think so. It fully approves of the restrictions on solicitors to advertise about personal injury claims. It wants that extended to others; it says those others are “claims agencies”.

Here are some facts:

1. PIAB are precluded from examining liability, but do get information on the facts of accidents. if those facts are not credible or reliable, PIAB can decline assessment;
2. In addition, respondents can and do decline assessment of false claims;
3. Consequently, piab assessments are of valid claims;

What public official can claim to be reasonable when decrying a claimed increase in PIAB claims? These claimants have been injured and want and deserve compensation.

The explanation is this; PIAB is biased against injured claimants.

1. It wishes to leave those persons in ignorance of their rights. (Patricia Byron; RTE’s “Morning Ireland” – 26/3/2013). Ms. Byron specifically complained in that interview that “the thought is being put in their mind”.
2. PIAB charges claimants for an assessment, but can, and does, relieve respondents (wrongdoers) of their obligation to pay, or even to submit to the PIAB system, before making an assessment (or, as should happen, giving the claimant an authorisation to go to court). (See Section 14 (b) of The Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003).

One in three accidents at work occurs in connection with “manual handling”.

Employers owe a legal duty of care to their employees. The duty of care includes taking reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of employees and to avoid accidents at work. The precise terms of the duty of care may be found in the law of negligence or it may be found in a statute, as a precise legal rule.

In the case of the obligation to avoid injury through manual handling, a duty of care is found in the law of negligence and in the provisions of The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007.

Manual handling includes lifting, pushing, pulling or turning weights or objects. It includes doing these things to people. Nurses are at considerable risk of injury from this cause.

See the advice on the topic from the Health and Safety Authority HERE.

In principle, an employer is obliged to provide mechanical equipment to execute manual handling operations. Manual handling by the worker personally is to be avoided where possible. Of course, the injury may not be to the back; it may affect the arm or shoulder or legs.

The risks in manual handling are known; they arise from loads that are too heavy; too large; difficult to grasp; unbalanced or unstable; difficult to reach, or of a shape or size that obscures the worker’s view.

Perfect justice does not exist. When a person is injured, by the fault of another, only a money payment is available in law to compensate him or her. This inadequacy is unavoidable. Recently, in Ireland, a generation of politicians, civil servants and some lawyers, decided to trade even this inadequacy to further their prospects and careers. They promoted the interests of the defence in personal injury claims, over the interests of the injured plaintiff and some still do so.

They were the least likely persons to care about the plaintiff in Hu -v- Duleek Formwork Ltd & Anor [2013 IEHC 50; every generation of Irish politician for eighty years had, in principle, cared nothing for that plaintiff.

It is imperative that this stop now. Even the lowest common denominator says so.

Think only of what John Donne, the English poet, wrote in 1623, in Meditation XVII (Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris);

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

With very little bother or trouble, the Oireachtas could and should remedy a real and persistent injustice for many injured persons.

In Hu -v- Duleek Formwork Ltd & Anor [2013 IEHC 50,  the High Court declined to make a declaration that the Plaintiff was entitled to the benefit of an insurance contract taken out by the insolvent Defendant company. The insurance company, Aviva, took issue with the Defendant’s failure to pay the excess of €1,000 which, as between the Defendant and Aviva, it was the Defendant’s liability to pay in respect of the Plaintiff’s claim.

Aviva would not be able to do this in the UK.

Mr Hu was injured due to the Defendant’s negligence and, it seems, breach of duty. The Defendant had paid a premium to Aviva and insured itself against claims such as that of Mr. Hu. It would have got its indemnity entitlement if it had not been insolvent. Its insolvency prevented it paying the excess. Mr. Hu offered to pay the excess but Aviva would have none of that. Consequently Mr. Hu is left without compensation for his serious personal injury and Aviva have escaped paying him because there is no person to make them do it.

More than 80 years ago the UK decided that exactly these instances of  the doctrine of privity of contract, which doctrine was in essence the basis of the Irish High court decision, were indefensible and insupportable in such circumstances. Recently the UK law was updated.

All we Irish have to do is to copy what the UK has done.

The past is still here. 80 years is no excuse for perpetrating injustice; it is an inexcusable injustice. Laziness and indifference are human faults not explanations.

Supermarkets are common locations of slips and falls. The customer numbers are high and the material to cause the slips is readily to hand.

Under the Occupiers Liability Act 1995 an occupier is obliged to take;

 “… such care as is reasonable in all the circumstances…….to ensure that a visitor to the premises does not suffer injury or damage by reason of any danger existing thereon”

There is a danger in supermarkets that stuff will fall to the floor and customers will slip on it.

The circumstances will vary between one part of the supermarket and another. If a tin of beans falls to the floor, it is unlikely a customer will step on it or fall having stepped on it. However, if vegetables or fruit fall to the floor the customer will surely fall if she steps on it. So, the care to be taken is greater in the area of the vegetables (or containers of oil, for instance).

Ireland does not like to collect information. If it does collect information, it does not like to release it to the public. Until the introduction of the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989, statistics on work accidents were completely unreliable. Many such accidents had been defined out of existence and were not searched for or recorded. The State set up a commission, the Barrington Commission, to review the facts on accidents at work, in the lead up to the introduction of the 1989 Act.

Things are now improved. Work accidents are monitored, to a degree, by the mis-named Health and Safety Authority.

It is mis-named because it deals almost exclusively with accidents at work, happening to workers. It has no remit to collect data on accidents and/or injuries generally.

For that kind of information we have to look to the USA. See HERE for the US National Safety Council’s report for 2008. On page 29 it recites:

“Falls are the leading cause of nonfatal unintentional injuries that are treated in hospital emergency departments, according to data from the All Injury Program…..More than 8.5 million people were treated in an emergency department for fall-related injuries in 2008. Falls were the leading cause of nonfatal injuries for all age groups except for the 15-24 year old age group, for which struck by or against an object or person was the leading cause. Struck by or against, overexertion, and motor vehicle crashes involving vehicle occupants were also leading causes for most age groups.”

This is surprising; falls injury more people than road accidents. (Possibly not; see page 37 of the US report) What does this mean for retailers?

Perhaps it is time to examine an idea (that a fall in a supermarket should trigger an obligation on the occupier to prove it happened in the absence of fault on the part of the occupier ) similar to one floated in the Irish Supreme Court; (Mullen v Quinnsworth Ltd, t/a Crazy Prices (No 1)[1990] 1 IR59 (raising the possibility of imposing “absolute” liability on the proprietors of large supermarkets on an analogy with the rule in Rylands v Fletcher)

We are rightly worried about our beef burgers. The supposed international criminal conspiracy undermining the meat industry is easily located; it is the meat industry. But the meat industry is not unique.

Consider our bread. We have been suspicious about it for a long time. When white bread was invented or introduced it was popular with the rich; they felt more confident that they were not eating bread contaminated with mouse droppings or insects or their body parts. (Bleached excrement and beetle parts are OK?)

Then the rich became suspicious about white bread. It was of lower nutritional value. Indeed, all mass produced bread is of lesser value than homemade or artisan made bread.

These issues are sub-sets of a larger issue: we inhabit one environment, much of it engineered. Lots of things can go wrong and if one does many people will be affected.

The general legal principle (the law of negligence) means that the person or persons who engineer the environment will be answerable for the consequences when things go wrong (central bankers and politicians, generally, excepted).

We have tried to make some of those “engineers” more readily answerable for the hazards of parts of that environment.

Employers come to mind.

See HERE  for the advice from the UK Health and Safety Executive to employers about safeguarding employees (and others, partially) from infectious agents.

Some of the “engineers” are builders and we have recent reason to think about walls and the building of them. In Cowan v GAA and McInerney & Son Ltd. [1991] 1 IR 389 the court heard that the plaintiff, a spectator, was injured when part of a wall collapsed on him at Croke Park in 1985. The part of the wall not collapsed had dowels or rods in it; the collapsed part did not. The court inferred that the specification for the wall required rods in every part and therefore the second defendant was liable. The first defendant was also liable because it should have reviewed the safety of its premises with a general structural examination following two notable disasters in foreign public stadia in 1985

We are a firm of lawyers. Our website should deal with legal subjects. Hopefully, we do not lapse from that rule and, without going to the trouble of conducting an audit, we think we do not.

It’s a broad rule and allows us to write (polemically if necessary) about such diverse topics as road accidents,  accidents at work,  medical negligence,  planning act infringements and fingerprints.

We could, if necessary, even comment on Bilbo Baggins’ contract with the dwarves at the beginning of The Hobbit. (1)

Now this, we think, gives us a practical turn of mind. Admittedly, it is difficult to know what that means and I think its meaning varies from situation to situation, but it probably means that we expect to reach for and grasp finality, or, as they say in the USA, we expect to reach closure (for our client).

That militates against interest in reviews of the current state of the law but certainly does not exclude it; we read or write them if we need to do so, but they are not our reading of choice. (2)

It is possible that a certain interest we express, in probabilities, springs from this utilitarian approach. Sometimes this appears so clearly our client notices it; one such litigious client bought us a crystal ball because we had lamented (too often) we lacked one. (3)

Being practical also means being discreet. At the beginning of the US civil war in 1861, the newspapers published the Federal army’s plans for forthcoming movements, having got the information from the army’s generals. Undoubtedly, the sales of newspapers increased substantially in Richmond VA. We try to avoid equivalent mistakes.

We also know the difference between discreet and discrete, (otherwise we would be incomprehensible) and we try to avoid being that. In the same vein we distinguish our inferences  from perceived implications and we deplore the use of “presently” to mean “currently”.

We hope we can understand an opponent even, or particularly, where we disagree with him. Take the National Newspapers of Ireland, for example.  It is this writer’s contention that the NNI position on its claimed property rights in internet links may be an old and sad error; a failure to know and use the subjunctive  in writing or speech.

Be that as it may (4), such an error can end in trying to defend the indefensible and what lawyer, at least, wants to end there?

What is the subjunctive? It is one of the three moods of English verbs: the indicative, the imperative and the subjunctive. The subjunctive conveys ambivalence and uncertainty. (5)

NNI cannot deny the uncertainty of its position on links; it asked the Copyright Commission to remove the perceived (by NNI) uncertainty.

So, the original position of NNI was this:

“Were we to possess a property right in internet linking to our websites we would charge our notified rates”

Unfortunately if your journalists, particularly your editors, are unfamiliar with the subjunctive you will retreat to the indicative  or even the imperative: now you have rubbed everybody up the wrong way.

1. Bilbo lacked legal advice. Surely he was more like a consumer than a professional burglar, as Gandalf had described his role? Nowadays if you go white water rafting, say, the organisers must ensure that you will come through the experience unharmed.
2. This brings CPD (continuous professional development) to mind. We do our CPD quota of hours every year, and more besides. Otherwise, professionally, we are toast.
3. In due course, when the shop in which he bought it went out of business we lamented to him how unforeseeable it was (not least for the shop) that that would happen!
4. The subjunctive!
5. When Phillip of Macedon sent a message to the Spartans – “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.”, they replied; “If.” 

The Health and Safety Authority is a good institution but an odd one. It was established under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. It has as its central purpose, as recited in Section 34 of that Act,

“to promote, encourage and foster the prevention of accidents, dangerous occurrences and personal injury at work in accordance with the relevant statutory provisions”

So, oddly enough, when some customers were killed and injured in the Connacht Gold shop in Longford, the Health and Safety Authority, as it has done before, stretched its remit to investigate the incident. Actually, that is an overstatement; at least one employee was injured in the incident.

The most notable case of the Health and Safety Authority extending its remit (to the benefit of all) was the road accident in May 2005 in which five schoolgirls died when a Bus Eireann bus crashed in a single vehicle accident.

The Authority prosecuted Bus Eireann, Meath County Council and a motor service company for the accident. The anti-braking system on the bus was disabled. The motor service company noted this and left it like that. The county council commenced roadworks at the place of the accident without making a safety plan. These circumstances, mostly the disabling of the ABS, resulted in the accident.

The presence of the bus driver, a Bus Eireann employee, made the bus a workplace and conferred jurisdiction on the Health and Safety Authority.

It would be a good idea to make the jurisdiction of the Health and Safety Authority general and not simply limited to places of work.

It is also time to reform the law on liability of occupiers of premises as laid down in the Occupiers Liability Act 1995.