Viral beach balls entertain a no win, no fee worker


While we're generally pretty up to date on the kind of things that matter to a no win, no fee compensation firm - changes to personal injury law, results of recent cases, that kind of thing - I find I've become less on-the-pulse than I was as a student regarding those viral internet videos.

I know this because, while researching a piece on holiday injury, I came across a video of the world's biggest beach balls bouncing off the top of a building in Texas. (Yes, slightly tangential research; it's amazing how Google can snag on seemingly unrelated pages, and even more amazing that they're often the more interesting ones that drag you away from the personal injury work you're supposed to be doing. Or is that just me?)

Back as a student, I'd probably have been aware of this immediately, but it's almost a year now since those balls bounced into a Texas street, and I still wouldn't have known if I hadn't been searching for "beach" and "accident" together.

Not that there was any kind of accident that might result in a compensation claim; the initial attempt at bouncing a ball saw it bounce onto a spiky car aerial, causing it to burst by accident. No-one reported injury, and by the look of the video, the ball is so light that the only accident injury I could imagine would be for tinnitus caused by the pop, if it was loud enough.

They are enormous balls, all but eleven metres across, and was certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ever; not only did it get the local cruise company who had created them some great PR, including what must be free advertising in the news programmes that covered the story, it's still getting viral attention from slowpokes like me.

It does lead on to wondering about the possibility of other giant-size beach things, though; if you had a bucket and spade on the same scale, the castles you might build would probably be enormous, and carry the risk of falling over on normal-sized holiday makers. Or the moat dug around it could end up so deep that a fall from height could result for anyone who didn't spot that the moat was there.

Maybe that's why the coastguards have such big chairs; it's not that they're peeking out to sea, no, it's an accidental slip of the pen when they were designing a record-breaking deckchair that they've stuck with since, pretending it's deliberate.

Whether it's through the initial video, or through the tangential aside, the beach ball story has left me happier than I thought I would be today; it's uplifting. So, as I return to my no win, no fee compensation work, I leave you with a YouTube clip.


Can I claim?