THE DANGERS OF DOING A NIXER
Local personal injury Solicitor warns of the dangers of doing uninsured work.
In the last few months of 2010 the dangers of doing a nixer i.e. doing work for cash not through the normal payroll or through the course of your job became apparent with 2 recent personal injury claims in the West of Ireland.
The first case, which was a Mayo case, involved a hairstylist who worked for a salon, doing work without the knowledge of her employer. Basically, this lady thought that she could earn a few extra euro in cash by doing some extra work privately for friends of hers in her own home. However, when she was asked to do a job for a friend of hers, in which she was to colour her hair, complications arose and her friend suffered severe burns to her scalp as a result of an adverse reaction to the hair colouring product.
Her friend turned out to no longer be her friend and sued her for negligence. Because the hair stylist did not carry out the work officially through her employer she was not covered by her employers insurance. Furthermore, because she did the job in her home her house insurance did not cover her. Accordingly, she ended up having to pay €13,000.00 in damages out of her own pocket.
A further recent case in the Mid-West involves a plumber who decided he would also do a nixer without his employer’s knowledge and fitted a back boiler to a fireplace for a neighbour of his. Unfortunately, the back boiler was not fitted correctly and when his neighbour put on a roaring fire within hours the boiler exploded causing severe physical injuries to his neighbour.
As a result of him doing this nixer this plumber faces damages in the hundreds of thousands of euro range and will, most likely, lose his home.
Accordingly, Berwick Solicitors wish to advise that you should, under no circumstances, do a nixer because you risk a claim for damages if your work causes injury or damage to a person or their property.
