Last updated on November 30th, 2021 at 01:01 pm

Mr Shah is partially sighted and usually wears dark glasses to disguise his eyes.  The workmen from Safestyle UK, who fitted the windows in his house, knew this and could see that Mr Shah had some difficulty moving around the house using a stick.  Despite this, when taking out the glass from the old windows, the workmen broke it up with a hammer and left it, unprotected, in a bin on the landing of Mr Shah’s house.  Unfortunately, when Mr Shah bent down to pick something up he did not see the glass and caught his hand on it.

At first Mr Shah thought nothing of it, and being partially sighted, could not see how deep the wound was, though there was a lot of blood which was clearly visible to the Safestyle workmen.  He cleaned the wound and stopped the bleeding, but after a few days the pain in his hand became acute and a visit to his GP resulted in an immediate admission to hospital.   Staff at the Northern General Hospital were able to see that the wound had become infected and stitched it up, but Mr Shah ended up in hospital for a week with blood poisoning, being told that he could have lost his hand – or his life – if he had not come to hospital when he did!

The symptoms lasted for six-eight months, needed a course of physiotherapy and resulted in a scar on his index finger and a 3” scar on the palm of his hand.   Despite all this, Mr Shah did not take legal advice following the accident at the end of 2009 until last year, as he mistakenly believed that because the accident was in his own home, he was not entitled to any redress.  However, following discussions with family and friends Mr Shah eventually approached Graysons and we were happy to take up the case for him.

When approached by our experts, Safestyle argued that the fitters (who were wearing Safestyle uniform) were ‘independent’ contractors and ‘fitting’ of the windows was not part of its service, and so it was not responsible for the workmen’s actions.  Unfortunately for Safestyle, its slogan ‘ya buy one, ya get one free….. and trust me its free fitting’ came back to bite it on the backside and we were successful in securing compensation from Safestyle of more than £11,000 for negligence and breach of  contract (under The Supply of Goods and Services Act  1982, the obligation to provide goods and services of a satisfactory quality is implied into contracts.  Clearly the service was not satisfactory in Mr Shah’s case!).

Mr Shah says “I am so grateful to Graysons WE.  You are amazing solicitors and I was over the moon with the compensation that you were able to win for me – and in such a short time, as I know these cases usually take years.  Safestyle was particularly difficult in this matter; trying to pass the blame to me, which I found really insulting and stressful, but you were able to cut through all of that and make the company realise that it was liable and had an obligation to compensate me.  I would recommend you to anyone.”