Trampolines and laptops are apparently quite dangerous

Industry news roundup: week ended 25 Mar 2013:

Everyone knows that you can quite easily smash your head open on a trampoline, but apparently it’s just as dangerous handling a laptop nowadays as well!

And no, I’m not being glib – apparently you can injure yourself so badly whilst moving a laptop that you can bring an accident claim against your employer for a cool £2,000, if you work for East Sussex County Council anyway. In fact, it’s more dangerous than packing a skip with rubbish, considering how the local authority had to only pay out £1,000 to another employee who injured themselves during the activity.

All told, more than £800,000 was paid out by the County Council over the last five years. Now, let’s be honest: there were a good number of these personal injury claims that were most likely completely appropriate, such as the £240,000 in compensation paid to a chemistry teacher in 2009 who developed the virulent lung cancer known as mesothelioma after 34 years of employment, but  £1,000 for an injury sustained from packing a skip seems a bit silly, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, speaking of injuries that seem silly at first but are actually quite serious, the in-house physiotherapist for the Bank of England actually broke his back recently as he bounced up and down on a trampoline located at a children’s theme park, and has since decided to launch a massive personal injury compensation claim for his suffering. 40 year old Paul Edwards is looking for at least £300,000 in damages after he fractured his spine at the Willows Farm Village and Park.

Mr Edwards claims he was just going for a normal bounce on the trampoline and he wasn’t attempting to use it in a way that was inappropriate or singularly dangerous. Despite that, he actually bounced so low that he struck his back on the way down, and he blames the theme park for positioning the trampoline in an area where the ground below it was too close.

Now, I don’t know what Mr Edwards was doing messing about on a trampoline designed for children, but that sounds quite a bit like contributory negligence to me. At the same time, the theme park should have known that adults would use the trampoline as well, which means they should have been taking steps to minimise the type of damage larger, heavier Brits could suffer as a result of their own stupidity; then again, that’s what insurance policies are for, aren’t they?

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