Public Liability

Buller Jeffries deal with a wide variety of claims within the public liability (“PL”) field (see also the Local Authorities’ page of this site).  The most common examples are:

Occupiers’ Liability
Examples of recent cases have included:

• public health scares – major legionnaires’ disease incident involving multiple claimants – PL claims failed
• a regular mix of supermarket slipping cases, collapsing displays, glass doors, child “trespassers”, falling trees and tree root problems
• the claimant who dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool
• the determined store detective that caused injury to a passer-by whilst chasing a thief

Animals
In addition to dog bite cases, we deal with riding accidents, loose horses and cattle on the highway, damage to valuable competition horses and damage to crops or property by loose animals.

The team works with you, selecting the “right” expert, such as a veterinary surgeon, blood stock agent, riding expert, dog psychologist or dog handler to achieve the right result.

Agriculture
With links to other areas e.g. product liability, interesting cases include :

• crop spray – drift in wind destroys hives of bees
• crop spraying – vaporisation of weed killer prior to absorption leading to drift into adjoining fields causing damage to brassicas
• warble fly protection – harmful to herd of cattle
• insecticides – the organo-phosphate problem; crop retardation
• footpath diversion – delicate negotiations with the farmer
• farm machinery – the runaway rotavator

Team Members:
Public health scares: Derek Adamson, Denise Brosnan, Caroline Coates and Nigel Dace

Occupiers’ Liability: Denise Brosnan, Geoff Lewis, Richard Seagrove and Helen Tinkler.

Animals: Denise Brosnan, Caroline Coates and Geoff Lewis