Accidents in Public and Private Places in Cyprus

A wet floor, a broken step, an unlit stairwell

These are the claims people are most embarrassed to bring and the ones where the evidence disappears fastest. A spill is mopped within minutes of the fall. A loose paving slab is cemented the following morning. The member of staff who helped you up has left by the time anybody asks for their name.

None of that is sinister. A shop that mops a floor after somebody has fallen on it is doing the sensible thing. It is simply the reason that what you do in the first hour matters more here than in any other kind of accident.

What to send us in a first enquiry

The date, the exact place, and what was on the floor or wrong with the step. Any photograph taken before it was cleaned or repaired. The name of the business and of anyone you spoke to, whether an incident form was filled in and whether you were given a copy, and the first medical record. If you fell in the communal part of a block of flats, tell us whether it is managed by a committee.

Who is answerable

Whoever controlled the place

The starting question is who was in control of the part of the premises where it happened. That is not always the person whose name is over the door, and it is frequently not the registered owner of the building.

The business occupying the premises: the shop, hotel, restaurant, gym, clinic or supermarket
The owner of the building, where the defect is in the structure rather than in the way the business was run, and where the owner and the occupier are different people
The management committee of a jointly owned building, where the accident happened in a communal area such as an entrance, a stairwell, a lift lobby, a car park or a pool
A contractor who was carrying out works, cleaning or maintenance at the time
A public authority, where the place is a road, a pavement, a park or another public space

The distinction between the owner and the occupier is worth settling early, because it decides both who the claim is against and whose insurer responds. In a leased shop or a rented apartment they are different people with different responsibilities, and each will point at the other.

Communal areas in jointly owned buildings raise their own questions about who is responsible for maintenance and repair. The firm's guide to common expenses and communal areas deals with how those buildings are run.

Where the thing that caused the injury was itself built, altered or extended, the permit position under the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law, Cap. 96 is a question worth asking. A staircase, a mezzanine, a balcony rail or a pool enclosure built without the permit that Cap. 96 requires is a fact about the premises that the occupier will already know and that a search may reveal.

Evidence

The first hour decides most of it

In this category, more than any other, the hazard itself is removed before it can be recorded.

A photograph of the hazard itself, in place, before it is cleaned or repaired, with something in shot that shows the scale and the location
Photographs of the surrounding area: lighting, signage, whether a warning cone was present, and the surface underfoot
The incident form the business fills in, and a copy of it. Ask for the copy at the time. It is much harder to obtain afterwards
The name of the manager or member of staff who dealt with it
Recorded footage, which most retail and hotel premises have and which most systems record over within days. A written request to preserve it, made early, is the single most useful step in this kind of claim
The names and telephone numbers of anyone who saw it, including other customers
The footwear you were wearing, kept as it was
The first medical attendance, and the receipts for everything spent afterwards

Two things that are frequently in issue are how long the hazard had been there and whether anybody had checked. Cleaning schedules, inspection records and staff rotas are documents that may exist, and they are documents held by the other side. That is a further reason for making the request in writing early rather than raising it for the first time in proceedings.

What the claim covers, and the time you have

A claim covers the injury and its documented consequences. The heads of loss usually examined are set out in the firm's guide, Personal Injury Claims in Cyprus. In falls, the practical difficulty is more often proving the state of the premises than proving the injury, which is why the photographs matter so much.

A claim for damages for personal injury must generally be brought within three years under the Limitation of Actions Law 66(I)/2012, and time usually runs from the date of the injury. Where the person injured was a child, different rules can apply, and that is a question to put early rather than late.

Questions we are asked

I did not report it at the time. I was too embarrassed.

That is the ordinary reaction and it is not fatal. Go back, or write, and report it now, with the date and the exact place. Then write your own account while you still remember it. What you lose by not reporting at the time is the business's own contemporaneous record, which is a reason to ask for the footage quickly.

They asked me to sign something before I left.

Send it to us, or send us a photograph of it, before you sign anything further. An incident form recording what happened is one thing. A document that records an agreement about what will happen next is a different thing entirely, and the two are not always easy to tell apart at the time.

It happened in the communal area of my own block.

Then the question of who is responsible for maintaining that area arises, and the answer usually involves the management committee and the way the building is run rather than any individual owner. Tell us whether there is a committee, whether common expenses are collected, and whether anyone had complained about the same thing before.

My child was hurt.

Different rules can apply to the limitation period where the injured person was a child at the time, and the question of who brings the claim is also different. Do not treat either as settled without asking. Bring the same evidence: photographs, the incident record and the medical notes.

Written on this subject

Personal Injury Claims in Cyprus: Liability, Evidence and Damages

Personal injury

Common Expenses and Communal Areas in Cyprus: Owners' Rights and Disputes

Property

This page sits within Litigation & Debt Recovery. Back to personal injury. Στα ελληνικά.

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Tell us briefly how we may assist

A few sentences is enough: where it happened, what was wrong with the place, and the date. We reply within one business day. Please do not send confidential documents until we confirm we can act.

Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia. Telephone +357 22 680 330, office@kleanthousplatis.com, or klitos@kleanthousplatis.com.

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