No win, no fee solicitors and vegetable related accidents

After a hard week of working for my no win, no fee solicitor bosses, I tend to go home in the belief that I've done a good job and I ought to give my head over to my own stuff for the weekend. But on Saturday morning I pulled back the curtains and there, across the field at the back of the house, were the flashing blue lights of a road traffic accident.

Unlike a typical car crash, this seemed to involve only one vehicle, a vegetable truck, which was leaning at a good thirty degrees from the horizontal. We still don't know what drove it into the drainage ditch, but my wife said I should note it down for this personal injury column - and stop being distracted from the housework that I was supposed to be doing.

Looking at the world of potential vegetable injuries, it's far from the only one that's happened. Only a few months ago, for example, there was an American story of tainted tomatoes in tins that were spreading salmonella around the States, despite the marvellously-named Tomato Safety Initiative operating in that country.

The reason it was notable was not the potential compensation claims that could result from negligence on the part of one of the companies involved in the movement of the tomatoes from field to consumer; rather, it was that it led to a bit of an outcry at the fact that some personal injury solicitors were reported to be chasing potential claimants before enough facts about the case were known.

There's quite a number of cases, at the field end of the food miles, where pesticides have led to a claim regarding exposure to toxic substances; at the kitchen end of things, and - appropriately for Halloween - medical professionals have been known to warn against the dangers of carving pumpkins, as shown by the statistics of people who cause themselves personal injury while slicing into the thick flesh.

There's not much likelihood of a claim in the pumpkin case, unless you can show that the carving kit you've used is defective - when there may be the chance of a faulty product injury claim - nor in the last kitchen accident I was involved in, in which a baking potato exploded just as I was opening the oven door. Even had I not dodged the spatters of spud, who would I have been able to bring a claim against?

But here, on our own no win no fee solicitor site, we've got a piece of copy about how broccoli can be a worsening factor for sufferers of tinnitus. (It's the salicylates, apparently.) Even that, though, is little evidence for any of us to make claims against hazard-happy parents who forced us to eat our greens as kids.

Can I claim?