Tourist attractions fall victim to compensation culture

I read this morning on the Daily Mail Online that tourist attractions in the UK are having to spend thousands of pounds on compensation to visitors who injure themselves on days out.

The popular destinations have all been hit for big payouts for trips, slips and falls.

Surely this is further evidence that every walk of life is being blighted by the growing compensation culture.

Some of the more incredible claims include a woman who fell into a moat while trespassing at Carlisle Castle at 2am.

She suffered pelvic and hip injuries and received £15,000 from English Heritage, which also paid her legal costs of £37,250.

The V&A had to pay £400 to a man who put his thumb in hot soup in the museum’s restaurant. The man had found the food counter unattended and helped himself to the soup, scalding himself in the process.

Figures published in the Sunday Telegraph show 24 organisations, which cover hundreds of individual sites between them, had paid out at least £2,149,345 in compensation payments and legal costs in the last five years.

Last night critics hit out at the rise in compensation culture across the UK saying it could have a financial impact on many attractions.

In many cases, organisations had to pay out far more in fees to the claimant’s lawyers than to the claimant themselves, prompting criticism of so-called ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers.

In most cases, the payouts were made by insurance companies but the costs would have been passed on in higher premiums.

The Carlisle  payout was the largest made by English Heritage. The woman fell into the moat in 2003 but the legal case was not resolved until 2007/08.

A spokesman for English Heritage said: ‘The woman passed a sign stating that our opening hours were 10am to 4pm as well as a notice saying ‘Please take care, historic sites can be hazardous’.

‘She can have been in no doubt that she was not entitled to enter and was trespassing.’

I find it really interesting that there is no mention of the women being prosecuted for trespassing.

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