We can help you claim
compensation following an accident
illness or injury - nationwide
Call: 0800 10 757 95
The world of personal injury litigation is often surprising, and even the best no win, no fee lawyers are unable to predict what the claims of the future will be.
This unpredictability has been highlighted recently by the "largest ever compensation claim seen in British courts". What is surprising about the claim in question is that it does not centre on repeat offenders like asbestos, car accidents or work accidents; it is, in fact, a product liability claim brought on by problems with a seemingly innocuous product: a sofa.
If, two years ago, before this claim came to public attention, a time-travelling solicitor had visited me from the future and told me that a sofa claim would become the biggest in British history, I would have thought "how?"
I very much doubt whether I would ever have guessed at the cause. That the compensation claims were initiated as a result of people suffering chemical burns would certainly have been low down on my list of possibilities.
Yet this is precisely what happened. While chemical burns are more normally associated with industrial injury claims made by people who have suffered accidents in hazardous workplace settings, the 1,600 claimants in the toxic sofa case sustained their injuries as a result of the most simple and sedentary of activities: sitting down.
The offending chemical - Dimethylfumerate (DMF) - is an anti-mould agent used by some manufacturers to protect leather goods. However, it is clearly not suitable for most uses, as even the tiniest amount of DMF can cause serious injury and irritation.
The case is still yet to be settled; however, it is in the hearing stage and it is expected that the judge will make his decision on the product liability claims soon.
It is estimated that the decision could see the award of tens of millions of pounds to affected consumers. And it is easy to see why the claimants in the case are deserving of such an outcome.
One of the many consumers making the sofa-related product liability claim comments, "It was very, very painful - I couldn't sleep at night, I couldn't walk about, I couldn't drive, the fact that every time I did walk about the skin would fall off and I would leave a trail of it - therefore I couldn't go to work."
But, in a way, perhaps we should not be surprised. Every year personal injury claims are made as a result of apparently atypical negligence and no win, no fee claims aren't settled on the basis of their usualness or otherwise; as ever, it is simply a matter of justice.
