Rosanna Hellebronth

Rosanna has a broad personal injury practice, advising on behalf of claimants and defendants. She has been involved in a wide range of cases including employers’ and occupiers’ liability, highway claims, claims against local authorities and the Prison Service, and harassment and trespass claims. She has dealt with numerous road traffic accident claims including complex multi accident claims with difficult causation issues. She has previously acted on behalf of the Metropolitan Police and for the Treasury Solicitor, on behalf of the Home Office, in respect of claims against the Prison Service.

Interesting cases that Rosanna has previously undertaken include:

• Acting for a Claimant (a protected party) who is severely autistic in a claim arising out of an accident in a swimming pool where he was left unattended by his carers.
• Acting for the Defendant in a contribution claim in respect of an allegedly defective lift at work.
• Acting for the Defendant in a Defective Premises Act / Landlord and Tenant Act claim arising out of the alleged collapse of a kitchen ceiling on to the Claimant’s head.
• Acting for a Claimant who had suffered a severe hand injury and is disabled, requiring significant amounts of care, but was unusually currently earning a higher wage than prior to the accident – successfully settled for a high value at a JSM, despite purportedly damaging surveillance evidence being disclosed by the Defendant.
• Advising, pleading a schedule and settling a thumb amputation case with a contentious loss of earnings claim.
• Acting for the Defendant in a claim where the Claimant alleged an unusual eye injury necessarily resulted in voluntary redundancy.
• Advising in and settling a claim where a young woman suffered a nasty pelvic fracture, fractures to both legs, urological and gynaecological injuries.
• Advising in writing and in conference, and successfully settling a claim where a teenager suffered a fracture to the femur, multiple scarring and psychological injuries where her loss of earnings was particularly contentious because the accident occurred just before her first day of work.

Brain Injury Work

Rosanna is developing her brain injury practice. Cases include:

• Acting as a junior on behalf of a young adult Claimant in a multi-million pound brain injury case arising out of a road traffic accident.
• Acting for a Defendant in a case where the Claimant suffered brain injury when he fell from a scaffolding tower on a construction site.

Fatal Accident Claims

She has been involved in a number of high value dependency claims brought under the Fatal Accidents Act, and has successfully obtained large settlements at JSMs.

Rosanna has a particular interest in clinical negligence claims, acting on behalf of both Claimant and Defendant, complimenting and building on her significant experience in personal injury work. Examples of previous cases she has dealt with include:

• Alleged allergic reactions to the use of titanium clips during surgery.
• Alleged psychiatric injury resulting from complications from negligently performed surgery.
• Failure to diagnose and/or investigate a scaphoid fracture, followed by a subsequent failure to remove a fixation screw inserted during surgery.
• Alleged damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerve resulting in vocal cord paralysis following carotid endarterectomy.

Rosanna has been involved in a wide range of industrial disease claims, including deafness and upper limb disorder claims, HAVS and vibration white finger claims as well as stress at work claims. Examples of cases include:

• Acting for the Claimant who worked as a secretary in an RSI claim.
• Acting for the Defendant, successfully defending on appeal a strike out of a high value (£500,000) stress at work claim.

Rosanna is experienced in defending fraudulent motor claims, having been instructed by a range of UK motor insurers. She robustly cross-examines in fraud cases, and has successfully defended fraudulent claims, involving low velocity impacts, phantom passengers, and staged and fictitious accidents. She has regularly dealt with multi-party fraud claims. She understands the importance of attention to detail in these types of cases in particular, and relishes the opportunity to be involved in fraud cases from the earliest stages of case preparation.

Rosanna represents a range of parties at inquests, including families of the deceased, persons involved in the circumstances of the death and other interested parties, e.g. insurers. Previously, she has been instructed to attend the inquest arising out of a death at the Oulton Park Racecourse. She also represented the family of one of the deceased who died during the de-rigging of a crane. The inquest required ad hoc questioning of experts on the rigging and de-rigging procedures of a crane. This accident prompted concern in the construction industry at the lack of a nationally recognized training programme for crane rigging and de-rigging.