employee at common law, say for injuries received at
work by what he alleges to be the employer’s negligence,
the employee can plead that the employer has been con-
victed under the Act and where this is so the employee’s
claim is near certain to succeed but will not inevitably
do so. Therefore, where the employer has infringed the
Act and this has caused injury to the employee, the Act
is a relevant part of establishing the employee’s case for
damages at civil law.
Offences and civil claims for accidents at work are
more likely to arise in a factory than in an office. How-
ever, the following are examples of accidents which can
occur and medical conditions which can arise in an office
environment:
■injury in a fire caused by a discarded cigarette or by an
overloaded or defective electrical system;
■a fall or other injury caused by a defect in the pre-
mises, such as a dangerous and badly lit staircase;
■an electric shock caused by badly fitted or defective
electrical equipment;
■injury caused by a defect in or careless use of equip-
ment, such as a guillotine or stapler;
■a medical condition caused by defective or ill-designed
chairs supplied to employees, particularly secretaries;
■eye strain and other conditions caused by exposure to
VDU screens.
Many of the claims brought broadly under the final
two points above have been in regard to what is called
repetitive strain injury.
It is also necessary to note the case of Walkerv
Northumberland County Council(1994) where damages,
eventually settled out of court at £175,000, were awarded
to Mr Walker when he suffered psychiatric damage because
he was overworked by his employer. The employer was
in breach of its duty to provide a safe system of work for
the employee and was therefore liable in negligence for
not doing so.
Claims under the above headings could now also be
framed as breaches of statutory duty, which are normally
easier to prove than common law negligence.
Claims for workplace stress have become quite com-
mon since the Walkercase. A major development favour-
able to the employer occurred in the House of Lords
ruling in Hattonv Sutherland(2002), the most import-
ant aspect being that an employer is normally entitled
to assume that the employee can stand the normal pres-
sures of the particular job unless he or she knows of some
particular vulnerability or problem. So an employee
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508
Starkv Post Office(2000)The Court of Appeal ruled that where the employer’s
equipment caused personal injury to an employee a
claim by that employee for damages against the employer
can succeed even though the employer has not been
negligent in terms, for example, of its maintenance. Mr
Stark was a postman. The Post Office provided him
with a bicycle. During the course of his employment he
was riding the bicycle when the front wheel locked,
sending him over the handlebars and causing him seri-
ous injuries. It was accepted that the bicycle had been
maintained and that the defendants were not negligent.
Even so, the court found that the employer was liable to
Mr Stark since there is strict liability under health and
safety legislation.who, as it were, suffered in silence would apparently be
at risk of losing a claim.
The House of Lords took a different view in Barberv
Somerset County Council(2004), stating that employers
must be pro-active in the matter of workplace stress.
Their Lordships placed the onus on the employer to
develop a knowledge of occupational stress and keep up
to date with effective precautions that can be taken to
alleviate it. This ruling, which represents the current law,
is of course much more favourable to an employee’s claim.
Stress claims acquired a new jurisdiction in Majrowski
v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust(2005), where a
successful claim for damages was brought by the claimant
under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The
stress was caused to the claimant by, among other things,
the setting of unreasonable job targets and bullying by
hospital managers. Interestingly enough, the employer
was held vicariously liable, there being no proceedings
against the manager. Claims under the 1997 Act can be
brought for up to six years (not three as in common law
claims) and there is no requirement of foreseeability
of damage by the employer. The Act does not apply to a
situation of harassment on one occasion.Civil claims – strict liability
Some areas of health and safety legislation have always
allowed civil actions to be framed around breach of
statutory duty and in some cases liability is strict, which
means that an employer can be liable even in the absence
of negligence on his or her part. An example of such leg-
islation relates to the provision of equipment to employ-
ees as the following case shows.