Dear Reader

AWhereas I often receive complaints about damage from cars relating to potholes, yours is the first I have come across about a personal injury. I was really sorry to hear about the nasty fall your wife had, which by the sounds of things, left her quite shaken. You sent me a photo of her purple, swollen face, which was really quite shocking.

It has now been five months since your wife’s fall, during which time you have been corresponding with the council. It outright rejected your request for compensation or a gesture of goodwill. In better news, it has since fixed the pothole, but it states that as the defect had not been reported since its last inspection, at which time it could not identify any problem, it is not liable for any damages caused as a result of the pothole.

You are totally outraged by this and even contacted a personal injury lawyer to see if you might have a decent case. However, his advice was similar to mine, which was that unfortunately, your wife has a very poor case indeed. “Cat in hell’s chance” was a phrase he used, apparently. For starters, you couldn’t prove your wife wasn’t negligent, for example, was she looking where she was going? Had she been consuming alcohol, which might have impaired her judgment?

Then there is also the fact that your wife’s injuries were not long-term and did not affect her ability to function in her daily life or earn income. Please don’t think I’m trivialising your wife’s fall here, but generally the bar for winning injury-related compensation is very high, and the compensation can be less than you might imagine.

Although I agree with your point about your wife being just as entitled to compensation as a broken car, what her case boils down to is this: did the council know about the pothole but fail to fix it?

Unfortunately Northumberland county council reconfirmed that there had been no reports of the pothole in between its last inspection and before your wife’s fall, and as such, it was not prepared to change its stance. This was not the resolution you were looking for, I know, but sometimes accidents do happen and there’s no one we can fairly point the finger at. I’m afraid this does seem to be one of those cases.