Coleman Legal LLP secures a settlement in a public liability trip and fall claim

A trip and fall claim in Ireland was settled on behalf of a young woman who tripped over a low-hanging chain while walking home through an industrial estate. The claim was resolved in June 2026 without an admission of liability. The settlement amount is confidential.

Our client

Our client was twenty one years old at the time of the accident. She was walking home through an industrial estate, on a route open to the public, when she fell.

What happened

Chains were hung from the walls around a building in the industrial estate. Most of the chains were missing. Our client did not see the one that remained, which was hanging low, and she tripped over it and injured her knee.

It was our client’s case that the low hanging chains were not visible to the public and that they amounted to a danger and a trap for anyone walking past. She had a lot of swelling and pain in the knee, was out of work for three weeks, and could not return to the gym for several months.

How the claim was investigated

Rose Sweeney brought the trip and fall claim on our client’s behalf. A claim of this kind arises under the Occupiers Liability Act 1995, which sets out the duty an occupier owes to people who come onto their property. The question in the trip and fall claim was whether the occupier had taken reasonable care to guard against a hazard that a person walking past would not readily see.

An engineer was instructed to examine the chains and the location, and to address how visible the remaining chain was to someone approaching it. That evidence was central to establishing how the accident had happened.

The outcome

The trip and fall claim was resolved in June 2026 by way of a settlement reached without admission of liability. The settlement amount is confidential and is not published. Our client’s knee injury had by then resolved, and the settlement brought the matter to a close.

How Coleman Legal Helped

Rose Sweeney handled this case from the outset. She instructed the engineer whose evidence addressed the visibility of the chain, gathered the evidence of our client’s injury and her time out of work, and negotiated with the insurer on our client’s behalf. She kept our client informed throughout and set out the options before any decision was taken.