We have had some great ou  tcomes for our clients just before the Christmas break.

 

We have resolved several personal injury cases, including a car accident leading to whiplash injuries, a shopping centre slip and fall as well as a workplace accident.

 

Whiplash injuries are quite common after car accidents, but they can be difficult to prove. There is a misconception that whiplash injuries resolve within a few weeks to a few months. Some do, but others are more long term or permanent, and can impair an injured person’s ability to work or engage in their pre-accident hobbies.

 

A shopping centre slip and fall case presents its own challenges. For example, it can be tricky to demonstrate that the floor surface is more slippery than what is permissible under the Australian standards. The other issue is, centre managers and cleaners often point the finger at each other. For example, the company that owns the centre will say that they engaged cleaners to maintain a safe floor surface so they are not responsible for slip and falls. The cleaning company will say they clean the floor at reasonable intervals but it’s not their job to replace old tiles with new ones (as an example). In reality, often both the shopping centre owner/manager as well as the cleaning company are in breach of their duty of care to patrons.

 

The workplace accident matter which we recently resolved shows that an injured worker is entitled to compensation even if he or she suffers from multiple conditions, some of which pre-date the accident.

 

Our clients are happy with the outcomes and they can now put their accident as well as the claim process behind them.

 

On the immigration front, several of our partner visa matters have been finalised with positive visa decisions. One interesting feature of a partner visa grant is that if the successful applicant is located outside Australia, they must travel to Australia within a certain time period – as specified on a case-by-case basis by the Immigration Department. Currently it is pretty hard for people to travel to Australia (unless you are an actor or a sportsperson) so we are keeping an eye out on this situation to make sure our clients are actually able to comply.