A company basically told my mum she's "the author of her own misfortune" (England)
Not sure how much I am actually allowed to say about this however, around 2 years ago my mother who works as a shop assistant was doing a night shift and this involved her pulling cages and moving stuff around this shop. To give some background information she had been working for around 3 years (i think) in the same role and this was a task she performed frequently.
Some of the cages, as you can imagine in a grocery store, do have to be under certain temperatures so the room they are held in are closed by a fast acting insulating *motion sensing* shutter,
one day at around midnight she was walking towards it and it began to come down...fast.
She's 5'6 and the shutter is massive so obviously you would assume when it started moving she wouldn't be able to see it right? Like nobody is going to collect a cage and simultaneously staring up waiting for something to hit from above, especially since the shutter is meant to be motion sensing.
Keep in mind some staff also thought that recently the shutter had been moving weirdly but it wasn't frequent enough for it to be a huge concern.
Anyways, it came down fast and it her on the head (only after which it began to go up again-weird for a motion sensing shutter) and she stood in pain holding a cage for support (the managers did help by giving her time to rest, ice etc.). In the moment, she felt like the ice and rest had made it fine and so she went home to sleep. In the morning, her neck was so stiff and her whole back was hurting. My dad took her to the hospital and they mentioned something about it being similar to whiplash and she needs physiotherapy.
Now, in light of all of this happening, we did contact a law firm, and when they talked to the company , the reply was essentially she was rushing through (she wasn't), not being attentive, the shutter works perfectly and it even has noise so she should have known, and also all staff have been given significant info on Health and Safety in online tasks so "she is the author of her own misfortune". The law firm gave up on the case after receiving that reply but said we can talk to other firms for advice. I have a feeling that they gave up since the agreement was no-win no-fee and the company they would have to fight against is MASSIVE in England, they would probably lose against them and it would take ages.
They changes the shutter to manual in light of the accident, but they also claimed the shutter was working perfectly, if it worked fine, why not leave it?
Also from watching cctv, there was barely any signage for warning, no lights, no sounds , only the mechanical sound of the shutter going down , but when pushing and pulling cages how would you hear it? The video the company sent was in complete silence and the mechanical noise of the shutter, to prove it had noise.
Anyways, since then my mum's been having more neck problems and i believe it also affected her spine and sciatic nerve as she gets random really crazy cramps in the leg and she can't travel or work like she used to,
They moved her to morning shift and since the pay is less in the morning and she can't work/stand as long as she could before, this affected finances aswell.
All the other firms we called asked for information but none want to actually do the case.
I don't have any knowledge of legal stuff like this so I'm not sure if this case even is valid but we dont have the resources to go up against a giant company like them.
Hoping for some advice ❤️