A work accident claim filed by an oil rig worker against his employers resulted in a £160,000 personal injury compensation award for serious injuries sustained to the worker’s hand.
Martin Brand had been employed by Transocean in May of 2006 at a North Sea oil rig when the incident occurred. Mr Brand’s injury claims originated from his work on the semi-submersible rig and involved such severe injuries that two of his fingers were in need of partial amputation.
While working as a roughneck, Mr Brand had been cleaning a section of pipes when his hand was crushed by moving hydraulic slips. Following his injuries, he was told by doctors that he would be unable to return to the kind of work he had been doing previously, so he sought retraining as a driller. However this proved impossible, which led Mr Brand to take up an on-shore employment offer in his employer’s human resources department. Following this he made the decision to file an accident claim against Transocean for their role in his injuries.
The Scotsman newspaper recently reported that Mr Brand has been received £160,000 in personal injury compensation for the injuries he sustained to his hand. Mr Brand’s personal injury lawyers initially sought for a larger award by stating he could have made rig manager by the time he had reached his early thirties, but it was decided that there was insufficient evidence to support such a claim in court.
Mr Brand’s employer had already made an admission of responsibility for the incident at a past court hearing. The former roughneck has already been the recipient of an interim payment of £40,000 in 2010 while the finer points of his larger compensation amount were settled by the courts.