Stuck in a lift - advice needed!

LittleWonder_2

Myself, my sister, brother-in-law, daughter and her 2 small children aged 3 and 6 were trapped in the lift in a shop for 3 and a half hours. We were only
released by the lift engineer as the fire brigade were unable to help. Obviously
we were very upset by this incident, but it was made worse by the staff. We found out from them that this had happened all the time and nothing had been done about it. No-one spoke to us once the firemen left and there were no instructions in the lift on what to do in the event of an emergency. The only communication that we had was from my daughter and her partner who were in the store the whole time waiting for us to be freed.

I wrote to them explaining how traumatic it was in much more detail. They have offered us £500 in vouchers each for the incident, with £50 for my daughter for having to wait. I have no idea whether it would be wise to accept this. I'm not trying to be mercenary, I just want it to be fair, but I am concerned that they are trying to fob us of as we have a genuine case against their negligence in maintaining this essential resource.

Anyone's thoughts would be gratefully received!

wealdroam

£3000 sounds good for a few hours inconvenience.

Has any one of you suffered any lasting consequence?

System

I would be happy to be trapped in a lift for 3 hours for £500. Of course it depends what the shop is.

Ich_2

as we have a genuine case against their negligence in maintaining this essential resource.

The fact that it does fail from time to time without any actual frequency would probably not be enough evidence. The shop can no doubt show suitable paperwork regarding it's maintenance.

pka_2

£3000 sounds like a very good deal to me.
How old was the lift? All new lifts have alarm buttons in them to press in such situations which puts you straight through to emegengy lift engineer

geri1965_2

I would accept it - you were not injured so there is no right to compensation.

I do sympathise as this would be one of my worst nightmares.

LittleWonder_2

The children were very upset by it and won't get in a life again. Significant hassle now when travelling with a pushchair. Just wanted to gauge whether it seemed fair and we weren't being fobbed off.

Anyone had a similar experience?

Enfieldian

Bite.

Their.

Hand.

Off!

benweston

Lifts do break and, while not a pleasant experience, if the shop can show maintenance history for the lift and evidence that reasonable efforts were made to ensure its continual operation, it's really just bad luck. As others have said, £3k sounds like a very good deal to me. My Mum's been unfortunate enough to get trapped in 2 lifts and didn't get any more than an apology!

VC88

I would accept their offer. I'm about to start my solicitor's training soon and from experience (seven years of reading negligence, OL cases, etc.), there may not be sufficient evidence as someone has previously said. Although the lift has broken down previously and this could be regarded as being a foreseeable event, if they can prove that it is maintained from time to time, then this will be proof of their attempt to remedy the problem. They don't have to take 'absolute' steps to fix or maintain something, (i.e. what would be classed an unreasonable expense), they just have to take reasonable steps (i.e. carry out repairs).

Also, negligence requires an injury to have occured, in addition to you being owed a duty of care, a breach of that duty and proving both factual and legal causation. Therefore a negligence claim may well fail.

***EDIT: I forgot to mention in my original post, when I referred to injury it does not mean purely physical injury, e.g. a broken arm for example, it can be psychiatric, HOWEVER, what you have told us would be insufficient psychiatric harm.

jetplane

Erm yeh I've been trapped in a lift when I was younger with a friend and her mother. I still remember the panic and the relief to get out, this was before the days of compensation and as a child I really had no choice but to get in a lift afterwards my mother said get in, its not going to happen again and I said ok and got in and its probably happened the odd time but not for as long.

I would be embarrassed to take that much in vouchers tbh, I think you are being well compensated. If this happens all of the time the shop will soon go into administration.