The horrific injuries suffered by a Bradford man, apparently as a result of his ‘toxic sofa’, could take ten years to heal.

The chemical burns Stefan Wasylkiw received, allegedly from his sofa, left him in agony, with his arm and face both badly affected.

Now on top of that pain and ongoing discomfort, he has had to endure an intolerable wait to try and get any compensation, having to fight his way through a legal nightmare.

We live in an extremely litigious society in which people make claims at the drop of a hat for anything and everything.

That has been highlighted by the increased payouts by motor insurers with whiplash injuries becoming more and more commonplace even though the number of accidents appears to have decreased.

There is no doubt some of these are genuine, but there must be some element of scepticism about many of them.

So it must be doubly frustrating for someone like Mr Wasylkiw, with obviously genuine and extremely serious injuries, to have to wait so long for his case to be dealt with.

It does seem that there have been other similar cases, with payouts last year to around 2,000 people who had received chemical burns from their sofas in circumstances akin to his.

It obviously has not been established at this stage that it was definitely the sofa that caused the injuries in this case. But something undoubtedly did cause this problem, and it is not acceptable that Mr Wasylkiw is still battling for answers two years on.

He deserves some sort of recognition and recompense for his ordeal. And it is also important to establish whether the sofa did indeed cause the burns for another reason – to make absolutely sure no one else has to endure similar agony.