Despite public perception, the English legal system isn’t folding under the weight of thousands of crazy compensation claims. Most accidents are not the sort for which compensation can be awarded because they are not the result of someone doing something unreasonable.

Most mad claims don’t get past the first five minutes of an interview with a solicitor. Even when a lawyer is overly keen, injustice will almost never occur because judges tend not to make daft decisions. There is a key difference between “man sues over nuts in peanut butter” and “man wins damages over nuts in peanut butter”.

A recent decision of the Court of Appeal shows just how reasonably the law works. In Tedstone v Bourne Leisure Ltd the court ruled against the claim of Carol Tedstone, 65, who had fractured her shoulder and suffered extensive bruising when she slipped by a poolside jacuzzi while staying at a hotel in Nottinghamshire.

This was a nasty accident, and the claim was a perfectly plausible and reasonable one. Mrs Tedstone won nearly £25,000 damages at the original trial. But, in denying her those damages, the appeal court ruled that no fault had been proved against the hotel management.

This judgment makes the sort of point which never comes across clearly in all those TV and radio adverts for litigation claims companies. They focus so much on questions such as, “Have you ever been injured and it wasn’t your fault?” that an important legal fact is omitted: it is not enough that someone without fault is hurt; he must be able to show someone else was at fault.

Mrs Tedstone’s case was brought under the Occupiers Liability Act 1957. That is a popular choice of action for people who have suffered slips and trips. The Act says that those who occupy or control premises owe a “common duty of care” to all people who are guests or visitors. The duty is to ensure, in all the circumstances, that people are “reasonably safe” in using the premises.

Mrs Tedstone attributed her slip to a large puddle of water by the hotel jacuzzi. The appeal court said the critical facts were that the accident happened in a poolside location where water hadn’t gathered before and that the water hadn’t been there five minutes before the accident.

The volume of water described by Mrs Tedstone meant it had to have come from an unusual malfunction of the jacuzzi, and had to have arrived in the minute or two prior to the accident. The normal systems that the hotel had for checking and cleaning the poolside could not have solved that unusual problem in the relevant two or three minutes. The accident hadn’t occurred, therefore, because of a lack of due care from the hotel.

Such an accident could have been avoided if the hotel had arranged for the pool and jacuzzi to be patrolled on regular complete circuits every one or two minutes but that would be an unreasonably demanding obligation. It would be possible to avoid most accidents across all fields of life but, to do that, the balance of safety against inconvenience would need to be tilted too far to safety. Limiting all road and motorway traffic to 30 miles an hour, criminalising motorcycling and horse riding, and banning all contact sports would leave a lot of empty seats in the hospital A&E waiting room but it would not be a change for the better for most people.

In a case about an injured worker’s claim in 1903, Lord Lindley said in the context of legal liabilities the word “accident” means “any unintended and unexpected occurrence which produces hurt or loss.” But while an accident might be the basis for a claim, not all accidents entail liability.

In 1993, the Court of Appeal ruled in a case about an assistant nurse who had been injured when she bashed into a bedside locker at Winwick hospital in Warrington. Lord Justice Hoffmann said that just because she was injured in a bad accident while on her employer’s premises didn’t mean she would automatically win. She had to show that the accident was caused by the fault of the hospital. Hoffmann said: “Not every accident is somebody's fault”, adding, “In my judgment there was no evidence to show that the hospital's arrangement of the furniture was negligent.”

In a case in 1995 in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Balcombe focussed on the same point in a different set of facts. This was a negligence case about a horse riding accident in a Worcestershire country road, but it addressed the same principle. He noted: “It needs to be said that there are still such things as true accidents and that not every accident can be attributed to the negligence of some person or persons.”

In general, however, the more someone knows about a distinct danger without acting to prevent it materialising, the more likely his action is to be blameworthy — annoying as that is in some circumstances.

Child: Dad, you know that ornament you’re always so worried that I’ll break?

Father: Yes

Child: Your worries are over!

Professor Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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