Case study

Case study

Case study

Compensating Kat for the holiday cancellation fee she will have to pay to her travel operator (which is £2,500);

Direct effect is a basic principle of Community law. Community law not only imposes obligations on individuals but also confers on them rights which they can invoke before national and Community courts. Direct effect allows them to take advantage of Community provisions regardless of national texts which are there to put them into practice. This strengthens the effectiveness of Community law and protects the rights of individuals in that they can plead Community law, regardless of whether national texts exist or not.

Direct effect is a principle of case-law established by the Court of Justice in the Van Gend & Loos judgment of 5 February 1963. In this judgment, it rules that "Community law not only imposes obligations on individuals but is also intended to confer upon them rights which become part of their legal heritage (…) and Article 12 (of the Treaty) must be interpreted as creating individual rights which national courts must protect".

For workers (like Kat in this case), Modern workers' compensation statutes in the United States have eight common elements: 1) an injured worker is entitled to benefits when suffering from an accidental personal injury “arising out of and in the course of employment” or occupational disease; 2) fault or negligence of the worker does not reduce or impede the right to recover benefits, and the employer's absence of fault or negligence does not reduce employer liability; 3) benefits are available only to employees (such as Kat in this case), not independent contractors; 4) employee wage benefits are normally one-half to one-third the worker's average weekly wage.

Additional benefits are medical and rehabilitation expenses and death benefits to dependents with maximum and minimum limits. Only injury causing disability, and thereby reducing earning capacity, is compensable. Accordingly, pain and suffering are not compensated. Therefore, the amount of wage and death benefits is normally much lower than a court might award in a traditional lawsuit, but workers' compensation is more certain, predictable, and swift; 5) when receiving workers' compensation, a worker and dependents lose their common-law right to sue employers for injuries falling under the statute; 6) a worker may still sue third parties causing the injury, but any financial recovery is first used to reimburse the employer for workers' compensation costs; 7) the state administers the ...