injured after tripping on Virgin Media wires

Lupamonkey

This weekend my foot got caught in some Virgin media cable sticking out of someone's house while I was walking down the street. I went sprawling across the pavement and landed on my wrist. It hurt like hell!

5 hours at A&E later I came away with my arm in plaster. I have a fractured wrist.

My partner witnessed it, and took loads of photos of the cables, and recognised that they were Virgin media Cables. (See pics)

I had no idea if I ought to have knocked on the homeowner's door. I'm quite un-confrontational, so we just went home.

Instead, I contacted Virgin Media via Facebook to report it, and they sent out engineers and fixed the cables the next day. (see last pic). They even gave me the email address to make an injury claim. My friends are all saying "where there's a blame, there's a claim". So I'm now considering this.

My question is, should I pursue an injury claim direct with them, or is it advisable to go through a no win no fee company? If so, who is the best one to go with? 

Or should I be contacting the homeowner and going thought their home insurance? 

I'm pretty clueless, as I've never had to do this before! 

Ref44

If the cables were in the street/public footpath, it won't be the householders responsibility, more likely the council.

Lupamonkey

Ref44 said:

If the cables were in the street/public footpath, it won't be the householders responsibility, more likely the council.

They were coming out of the person's house and into the ground. I just added some pics to illustrate this better. 

I'm guessing Virgin Media already accepted responsibility as they came straight out to rectify. 

p00hsticks

Lupamonkey said:

Ref44 said:

If the cables were in the street/public footpath, it won't be the householders responsibility, more likely the council.

They were coming out of the person's house and into the ground. I just added some pics to illustrate this better. 

I'm guessing Virgin Media already accepted responsibility as they came straight out to rectify. 

I think a reasonable comparison would be e.g. if you tripped over a broken paving slab in the pavement  - in such a case the council would only be liable if they had previously been informed of the problem and not rectified it in a reasonable time or had failed to inspect their property at regular intervals. 

So I think a lot will depend on how long the cable had been like that, and whether the householder or other users of the pavement had made Virgin aware of the problem. 

MyRealNameToo

Lupamonkey said:

This weekend my foot got caught in some Virgin media cable sticking out of someone's house while I was walking down the street. I went sprawling across the pavement and landed on my wrist. It hurt like hell!

5 hours at A&E later I came away with my arm in plaster. I have a fractured wrist.

My partner witnessed it, and took loads of photos of the cables, and recognised that they were Virgin media Cables. (See pics)

I had no idea if I ought to have knocked on the homeowner's door. I'm quite un-confrontational, so we just went home.

Instead, I contacted Virgin Media via Facebook to report it, and they sent out engineers and fixed the cables the next day. (see last pic). They even gave me the email address to make an injury claim. My friends are all saying "where there's a blame, there's a claim". So I'm now considering this.

My question is, should I pursue an injury claim direct with them, or is it advisable to go through a no win no fee company? If so, who is the best one to go with? 

Or should I be contacting the homeowner and going thought their home insurance? 

I'm pretty clueless, as I've never had to do this before! 

Do you have legal expenses insurance on your Home insurance? They will typically cover making PI claims and will consider who should be pursued. 

Lupamonkey

MyRealNameToo said:

Do you have legal expenses insurance on your Home insurance? They will typically cover making PI claims and will consider who should be pursued. 

Thank you! For some reason, I hadn't thought of that. Partners is digging out our policy as I type. 

Update: Nope, don't have PI cover   

35har1old

MyRealNameToo said:

Lupamonkey said:

This weekend my foot got caught in some Virgin media cable sticking out of someone's house while I was walking down the street. I went sprawling across the pavement and landed on my wrist. It hurt like hell!

5 hours at A&E later I came away with my arm in plaster. I have a fractured wrist.

My partner witnessed it, and took loads of photos of the cables, and recognised that they were Virgin media Cables. (See pics)

I had no idea if I ought to have knocked on the homeowner's door. I'm quite un-confrontational, so we just went home.

Instead, I contacted Virgin Media via Facebook to report it, and they sent out engineers and fixed the cables the next day. (see last pic). They even gave me the email address to make an injury claim. My friends are all saying "where there's a blame, there's a claim". So I'm now considering this.

My question is, should I pursue an injury claim direct with them, or is it advisable to go through a no win no fee company? If so, who is the best one to go with? 

Or should I be contacting the homeowner and going thought their home insurance? 

I'm pretty clueless, as I've never had to do this before! 

Do you have legal expenses insurance on your Home insurance? They will typically cover making PI claims and will consider who should be pursued. 

Usally only when it occurred on your own property 

penners324

Persue Virgin Media directly 

Nasqueron

penners324 said:

Persue Virgin Media directly 

Depends who is liable - if they fitted it to the wall and it's come loose since someone kindly smashed up the box and no-one reported it, not sure how they or indeed, anyone, is liable except for OP not noticing it

Notice how, when it was reported, VM came and fixed it

Lupamonkey

Nasqueron said:

not sure how they or indeed, anyone, is liable except for OP not noticing it

Notice how, when it was reported, VM came and fixed it

I assume that would be the case for any trip incident.

Nasqueron

Lupamonkey said:

Nasqueron said:

not sure how they or indeed, anyone, is liable except for OP not noticing it

Notice how, when it was reported, VM came and fixed it

I assume that would be the case for any trip incident.

Depends on the requirements of the applicable company. In this case, Virgin are hardly responsible for a household wiring setup that they put in neatly inside the box X years ago where someone has vandalised it and pulled the cables out and no-one has reported it to them. It's not like a junction box on the street where their engineer left the wires out after maintenance for example. Similarly if a council owned pavement is damaged and they don't fix it after it's reported and someone fell over it, they could be liable.

Further, it's open to abuse - for example, Mr Naughty trips over his shoelace and injures himself then sees the wire and pulls it out and claims he fell over that and wants free money. 

Purely as devil's advocate, that wiring would be difficult to hook your leg in given how close it is to the wall and piping, it would have only have been pulled out so far after it was pulled by your trip.

It's unfortunate you got injured but I don't see how this is somehow the fault of Virgin, the council or even the home owner.