Sport Injury Claims

Sports Injuries

Participating in sport is something which is recommended for people of all ages, for reasons of both physical and psychological well-being. Indeed, so beneficial are the effects of taking regular physical exercise, that many GP’s around the country are now actually able, and indeed keen, to prescribe exercise programmes or even cut price memberships of local gyms or health clubs as part of the steps required to boost the health and well-being of patients who are less active than is good for them. GP’s such as those based in Watford and Three Rivers, UK, refer their patients to 12 week programmes with a qualified instructor, including cut-price access to a gym and swimming sessions. (Source: www.hpft.nhs.uk/_uploads/documents/wellbeing/active-4-life-quick-reference-guide.pdf)

No matter how good taking exercise and engaging in sporting activity is for you, however, there’s no getting away from the fact that injuries can sometimes occur, particularly amongst those who engage in high impact contact sports such as rugby or football. Figures on accident and emergency admissions compiled by the Health and Social Care Information Centre revealed that, during the 12 month period up to February 2012, 388,500 cases involving sporting injury were treated in hospital emergency departments, a rise from 338,200 in the previous 12 months.

Whilst anyone with half an eye on the topic will know that accident and emergency attendance is up across the board, the numbers attending with sporting injuries is rising faster than the average, and whilst just over half of the cases (53%) resulted in the patient being sent home with no further treatment, slightly less than 6% resulted in admission to hospital, which represents a figure of 22,200 people.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, in a study of the safety of sports pitches and playing fields in the UK, uncovered the following dramatic statistics:

a) There are 22 million sports injuries per year in the UK
b) On average, people who play sport regularly have to take five days off work per year as a result of sports injuries.

All of this demonstrates so far is that sport can be dangerous as well as beneficial, and the vast majority of injuries represent merely the risk you have to run if you’re going to reap the benefits and enjoy the experience of participating. This is certainly true if the injury you suffer comes about as a result of an honest accident, but every year tens of thousands of people receive sporting injuries which only happen because someone else was negligent.

It may be the person with responsibility for maintaining the equipment you were using, or for the upkeep of the playing surface. Perhaps a coach failed in their duty to provide adequate pre-match preparations, or another participant injured you in a manner which could only be described as reckless. No matter what the particular circumstances of your case, if you feel you were injured because someone else made an unreasonable mistake, you may be able to make a claim.

As with all other personal injuries, your first priority upon being hurt is to seek medical assistance. This will firstly ensure that you receive any help you need to begin treating the injury and will make sure that the long term effects are minimised as much as possible, and secondly it will demonstrate that your injury was indeed genuine, and will create an official record detailing exactly what happened to you.

In the immediate aftermath of an injury the chances are that you won’t be thinking about claiming compensation, but a bad injury could stop you earning a living, and it may only be compensation that keeps your head above water. That’s why it’s best, if possible, to start gathering information regarding your claim as quickly as possible. If a piece of equipment malfunctioned and this caused your injury try to take a photographs of it, whether it’s a rowing machine in a gym, a goalpost that fell over or a playing surface that was left in a dangerous state.

If other people were present to witness the injury, take their names and details and ask if they’d be willing to make statements detailing exactly what happened to you and how. Your personal injury lawyer will use all of this information in order to build the most convincing possible case, and the same is true when it comes to keeping receipts for any expenses arising from your injury – such as travel costs and prescription charges – as well as documentation detailing any pay you may have lost through having to take time off work. You can even claim if loved ones take time off to help nurse you, since the bottom line is that they’re going to be out of pocket and neither you, nor they, should be expected to pay.

The numbers of people in the UK who participate in the five most popular sports at least once a week are as follows:

Swimming – 2.9million
Athletics – 2.2million
Cycling – 2.1million
Football – 1.9million
Golf – 0.71million

Football Injuries

The fact that half of all the sporting injuries being dealt with at accident and emergency departments involved young men aged between 10 and 29, and that there was peak attendance on Saturday afternoons between 3pm and 5pm, and Sunday afternoons between 11am and 4pm offers a pretty convincing impression that football was to blame for more of the sporting injuries than any other individual sport.

A lot of these injuries doubtless happened by accident, but some would have been caused by negligence, whether through a coach pushing a player too far, an opponent engaging in recklessly dangerous play or some equipment malfunctioning in a dangerous manner. No matter what the cause, the pain you are in and the knock on effects – time off work, loss of earnings and out of pocket expenses – should be met by the person or persons responsible.

Rugby Injuries

The sport of Rugby, in all its forms, has a reputation for being a physically demanding, often painful and sometimes even dangerous sport. Taking a risk on your own behalf, however, is not the same as someone else risking your safety by not taking as much care as they should. Given the high impact nature of the sport, negligence in a game of rugby could have serious and long lasting effects, with some of the most common rugby injuries being:

• Traumatic Injuries – broken bones, dislocated fingers, cuts, sprained ligaments, tendons or muscles.
• Facial fractures – particularly broken bones.
• Knee injuries – ligament strains and tears.
• Concussions – exacerbated if players insist on playing on and aren’t advised not to do so.

A lot of these injuries occur when someone doesn’t use the correct technique when tackling, rucking or scrumming. If you are injured playing for a club, the treatment you receive immediately afterward might have a big impact upon your ability to recover and how long it will take to do so. If you aren’t given the right treatment quickly enough, then this may well amount to negligence in its’ own right. If you feel that you’ve been injured playing rugby and that the injury was realistically avoidable, then you may have a case for claiming compensation.

Gym Injuries

When you attend a gym, the people who own and run that gym have a duty of care towards you, and this duty of care extends to doing everything they can to help prevent any injury. Whilst you also have a responsibility to use the equipment safely and not push yourself too far, it should be remembered that you are the amateur in this scenario, and that the professionals should do all they can to ensure that you remain fit and safe. Common causes of injury in the gym which might be defined as negligent include:

• Poorly maintained or damaged equipment.
• A lack of clear instruction in matters such as how to use the equipment and how far to push yourself.
• The wrong instructions being given.
• Slipping or falling on badly maintained floors or spillages.

When you first visit a gym you should be taken through an induction process which involves determining your levels of strength and fitness and using this to devise an exercise programme which will stretch you without offering an undue risk. If you do injure yourself in a gym, then the owners should ensure that you receive medical attention as quickly as possible, and should enter the precise details of your accident in an accident book. Any failure to do so may well be viewed as negligence should you proceed to make a claim for compensation.