Back Injury At Work Claim

Laura was tasked with order picking as part of her role at a local warehousing company. This role was often very fast-paced and primarily involved manual handling/lifting.

Part of her role was picking orders from a conveyor belt and packaging them for onward transportation. The boxes were pre-filled by other employees and should have been safe to lift, however, as Laura began to lift the box from the conveyor belt, she soon became aware that it was far heavier than expected. 

The strain of lifting the box caused Laura to feel a sharp and sudden pain in her lower back. The weight of the package had caused damage to the soft tissues in her back.

Thinking that the pain would go away with time, Laura continued her normal daily routine as best she could, however the pain persisted over a period of 5-6 months which then drove Laura to instruct us to pursue a claim on her behalf for compensation as the box that was lifted should not have been as heavy as it was, and her injury could have been avoided.

The employer did not provide any mechanism for checking how heavy the boxes were prior to sending them onto the conveyor belt nor any warning that the box in question was more heavy than normal.

How Tinsdills Helped

We presented a claim in negligence in breach of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Manual Handling Operations Regulations.

The warehouse denied liability and so we requested an expert medical report from a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, which lead us to issuing court proceedings.