Care worker’s horror injuries after 15ft fall onto tea trolley
A care worker has been awarded GBP21,000 compensation after falling 15ft from an upper floor and landing on a tea trolley at an East Riding care provider. Rhoda Elvidge, aged 54 at the time of the incident, tripped when exiting the lift at an assisted living home in Withernsea[1] run by HICA because it hadn’t drawn level with the floor. She then crashed through the landing balustrades and plummeted to the floor below.
She was taken to Hull Royal Infirmary[2] with four broken ribs, a bleed on the lungs, a damaged wrist and cuts and bruises after the horrific incident in 2020. She was unable to return to work for more than five months and had to claim statutory sick pay of GBP109 a week. “If the trolley hadn’t been there, it could have been much worse,” she said. “I could have landed straight onto the hard floor, but it broke my fall.
I lay there in pain for two hours before the ambulance came.” Mrs Elvidge, who lost her husband 14 years earlier, said she if she hadn’t recently sold her home before the incident, she doesn’t know how she would have a managed. She said: “Fortunately, I had some money to fall back on.
But if I was still paying the mortgage, I don’t know what I would have done. I was discharged home and I live alone. “I couldn’t shop or shower by myself and the pain was awful.
I only got through it because my friends came around to help and look after me.” Mrs Elvidge took legal advice from Hudgell Solicitors in Hull. In the damages claim, Hudgell Solicitors alleged her employer, the HICA Group, was at fault for the accident as it had failed to ensure that the lift was maintained and was in efficient working order and in good repair.
Sarah Moore, a litigation executive at Hudgell Solicitors, said: “We also believed the company failed to heed issues with the lift the previous week before the accident. “Our client could have been warned of the dangers of using the lift, verbally or by way of signs or other methods and it could also have made the decision to withdraw the lift from use; as it did not, the possibility of an accident happening was ever present.” It was also claimed that as Mrs Elvidge had broken through the landing balustrades as a result of her trip, they were not adequate enough to provide protection and therefore were not of a good enough construction to prevent a fall.
Hudgell’s said the HICA Group admitted liability and the case was settled out of court with GBP21,000 compensation being awarded based on Mrs Elvidge’s physical and psychological injuries and loss of earnings.
Mrs Elvidge eventually returned to work at the home and said her manager and colleagues “had been brilliant” but she could not use the lift again due to anxiety and eventually found another carer position elsewhere.
Hull live approached the HICA Group for comment.
References
- ^ Withernsea (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Hull Royal Infirmary (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)