My client was employed as a delivery driver for a furniture company. His company would often pair him up with untrained agency workers due to being short-staffed.
My client was injured whilst carrying an item of furniture up the stairs of a customer’s house in Ipswich, Suffolk. His colleague that day was an untrained agency worker with no previous experience in manual handling. As a result, my client was effectively having to bear most of the weight of a heavy product whilst walking up stairs and navigating a landing part way up the staircase.
In doing so, my client felt a sharp twinge in his back, which later turned out to be the symptom of a prolapsed disc. His mobility gradually became worse and he required surgery a few months later.
Our orthopaedic expert examined the claimant and reviewed his notes and concluded that this incident at work had brought forwards a pre-existing degenerative condition that had not previously caused my client any problems. The expert concluded that it was very likely that my client would have suffered a prolapsed disc within 18-24 months even if this accident had not occurred.
My client was therefore entitled to recover compensation for the accelerated and additional suffering that this incident at work had caused him.
