We’ve all laughed about the fact that nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see a bag of Pistachio Nuts with a bold print warning that the bag, funnily enough, may contain nuts. It’s also a long running joke that when you buy a takeaway coffee you’ll probably find a “CAUTION: HOT” notice somewhere on the cup. But, laughable as these forewarnings are, they are actually just some of the gloomy consequences to have arisen from what has become known as Britain’s “Compensation Culture.”
It’s common knowledge that accidents can, and probably will, happen. So why does contemporary society seem to be constantly seeking someone to blame? Do people who will take any opportunity to sue genuinely need the compensation money to get by in life, or are they just testing the limits of Britain’s legal system?
When researching this topic, there seemed to be no end to the seemingly ridiculous cases which not only made it to court, but often won!
For instance, last year, a primary school teacher was awarded £14,000 after she fell off a toilet and dislocated her hip. Firstly, I’m not quite sure how falling off a toilet can be classed as someone else’s fault, but as if that’s not aggravating enough, it was actually one of the children’s toilets, designed for under 11s! As you can imagine, this case didn’t go down well with locals, so in an attempt to justify the compensation the council “reassured” members of the public that this money would not be taken from council funds, but the individual school’s budget. Oh right, so that’s OK then, never mind the poor children who were probably banned from going to the toilet for some time on “health and safety” grounds and are now losing out on resources because of the stupid woman!
Next came the person who received a mighty £195,000 after her employer apparently “wrecked her job prospects” by refusing to supply a reference. Well she’ll never need to worry about her failing career again, will she?
Every year a reported £10 billion in compensation is paid out in Britain, which averages at £500 per year for every household. When you think what such a phenomenal amount of money would mean to any charity, you start to realise that this is a joke, but not a very funny one.
It really does seem that nowadays people are refusing to take responsibility for their own actions, or even just accept that in life, many situations are unavoidable. Britain’s ‘compensation culture’ is now apparently so out of hand that ‘ambulance chasers’ exist. This is a group of ‘professionals’ who seek out people who have had an accident and persuade them that they should and could win compensation.
So perhaps it’s not entirely down to us being greedy individuals, but more to do with the fact that nowadays it’s almost impossible to go a day without being asked “Have you had an accident in the last five years?”
When you think about it, how many of those ridiculous, staged adverts are there nowadays? You know the ones, where some random talks about how their life was turned upside down when they fell in work because the floor was too slippery, but now it’s all fine because “injury-lawyers-4-u” helped them win enough money to take early retirement and buy a house in Spain, where they can recuperate from now on.
You’ve only got to look at all the spoof insurance adverts there are on YouTube to realise how ridiculous most find these people. But at the same time, they must be doing something right, because suddenly people are remembering the time something just as ‘unreasonable’ happened to them.
It’s now got to the point where all compensation claims are treated as a source of ridicule in the media. Most of us probably remember laughing at the woman in America who sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot. But what most newspapers failed to mention was that 79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns and did need extensive hospital treatment. After McDonalds admitted being aware that its coffee was sold at a temperature 20 degrees higher than other retailers, Liebeck was reportedly awarded over $600,000.
Now this is one instance in which I can see that some compensation was deserved, but surely she didn’t need that much to pay for her treatments? But when you hear about cases like this you start to understand why the compensation craze kicked off; because if money is that easy to come by, who wouldn’t try their luck?
Only last week, a teenage boy won £1,000,000 after suing the parents who organised a party he attended because he was kicked in the head on the bouncy castle and left permanently brain damaged. Tragic as this situation was, I can’t help but feel sorry for the parents being sued, especially since the judge dismissed claims that the boy’s father should have been keeping an eye on his son at the time. To me, there is absolutely no sense in that, because surely any caring parent would be constantly aware of what their child was doing, and would be vigilant to any possible risks. But then again, since when have bouncy castles been a high danger zone?
These cases are just a few of the constantly growing amount of compensation cases occurring every day in Britain. It begs the question when will it end? What is it going to take for people to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, accidents are nothing more than ‘acts of God,’ and that bad luck does not deserve a damages payment?
I do acknowledge the need for such companies to assist people who really need compensation, and understand that for many people the money can help rebuild their lives following a serious injury. What I’m saying is that the greed of some people in this country has turned compensation laws into a laughing stock, and I think it’s about time someone put a stop to it.
Saying that, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I read about Jean Gratton, the woman who sued Airtours because whilst sunbathing on one of their holidays, a coconut fell on her chest. Claiming this could definitely have been fatal, Ms. Gratton was eventually ‘rewarded’ £1,700 in an out of court settlement. I mean seriously, where’s the sense in that?
