Nightclub goers personal injury claim

We acted for a client who fractured her wrist when she went to a night club with a group of friends. She had just started dancing when she slipped backwards on some spilled drink and landed heavily on the dance floor.

The club's insurers denied liability and argued that the club had a good system for spotting and clearing up spillages. The system was that they relied on a couple of staff collecting glasses to notice if anything had been spilled and to clean it up. We argued that they couldn't expect 2 busy staff to notice spills on a busy and dimly lit dance floor and that they should have operated a policy of "no drinks on the dance floor".

We forced the club to disclose its accident records which showed that there had been several earlier accidents in similar circumstances so that they could hardly say that their cleaning system was working. The insurers then changed their minds, admitted liability, and made a settlement offer which was too good to refuse.