Injuries/Damage caused by potholes

Compensation can be claimed for injuries suffered by pedestrians and damage to motor vehicles occasioned by potholes in road/pavement surfaces.
There are no exceptions to this rule in the case of roads and pavements in urban areas and motorways. When such injuries/damage occur on non-toll roads outside urban areas, each individual incident is examined in terms of its seriousness.
The following rules apply for obtaining compensation:

• it is a firmly established practice that the authorities responsible for the road surface on which the incident occurs and are, depending on the circumstances, liable for compensation (the Town Council, the Provincial Government or the motorway operator) do not pay up unless court action is taken;
• the Courts rule in the claimant’s favour, provided that:
  • there are eye witnesses (i.e., people who saw what happened: the impact of the pedestrian’s foot or of the wheel of the vehicle in the hole); it is not sufficient that, for example, the witness states that he only heard the sound of that impact and then saw the damage to the vehicle and the hole in the road/pavement;
  • the hole is such as to be anomalous with respect to the conditions of the other stretches of the same road;
  • there were no signs warning of the hole’s presence;
  • the person injured or whose vehicle was damaged could not be expected to know the hole was there (e.g., if the hole had been in front of that person’s house for some time the danger was apparent and compensation is ruled out).

In light of these facts, victims of potholes are strongly advised against claiming for compensation on their own (they are unlikely to obtain a payout and run the risk of their right to compensation being time-barred) and should, instead, instruct a qualified lawyer.