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It is uncontroversial that an employer has a duty to take reasonable steps to see that his or her employees do not suffer injury in the course of their work. The standard expected of employers is very high, which is why employers are now obliged to take out insurance to cover their liability to their employees. For example, the fact that the employee approaches his duties in a foolish and self-destructive way does not necessarily relieve the employer of responsibility. In GeneralCleaningContractorsVChristmas1952, for example, a window cleaner successfully sued his employer after he injured himself falling from an upper-storey window. The claimant was cleaning windows by climbing onto the window ledge outside the building, and hanging on to the top of the window sash. Although clearly dangerous, this practice was widespread and, it appears, known to the employer. The House of Lords held that the employer ought to have taken steps to prevent its staff exposing themselves to such dangers. Moreover, an employer can be held responsible for the injuries caused to one employee by another (HudsonVRidgeManufacturing1957), even where the injuries do not arise in the course of either employee's duties. There is now a whole raft of legislation that has the effect of making it easier for an employee to claim compensation from his employer. For example, the EmployersLiabilityDefectiveEquipmentAct1969 makes an employer responsible for injuries caused by defective equipment provided to his employees, whether or not the employer knew, or ought to have known, about the defect. In short, there is a strong presumption that, where an employee suffers personal injury at work, the employer is liable. This is why employer's liability insurance is so expensive.
It should be noted that, although the employer's duties are onerous, they are not absolute. Not every mischance that befalls an employee can be attributed to the employer. Even where the employer has himself acted in a blameworthy way, the employee still has to establish that his injuries were caused by something that the employer did, or failed to do. In McWilliamsVSirWilliamArrol1962, the widow of a construction worked failed to make out a case against her late husband's employer, after he plunged 70ft to his death from the steel tower he was constructing. There was no doubt that the employer should have provided a safety harness; in fact, the employer was guilty of a criminal offence for not doing so. Nevertheless, the employer was able to show that construction workers never wore safety harnesses, even when they were provided. So, despite the breach of basic safety regulations, the employer's were not held liable for the worker's death. This issue of causation is an important one, and we will return to it later.
Although an employer's duty to protect his employees from physical injury is of respectable antiquity, liability for stress-related injury is a much more modern development. The first sign that stress related to overwork might be actionable appears to come in the case of Johnstone v Bloomsbury Health Authority [1992] QB 333. Here a junior doctor suffered a nervous breakdown after routinely working more than 80 hours a week. The Health Authority sought to have his claim for compensation struck out, on the basis that he had agreed to this volume of work under his contract of employment. The Court of Appeal held, by a majority, that the claimant should be given the opportunity to present his case to a court. This does not mean, of course, that he would have succeeded and, in fact, the matter never got to a hearing in the end.
The first successful claim to be heard by the High Court was probably Walker v Northumberland CC [1995] 1 All ER 737. The claimant was a social services manager who had been forced, owing to local authority funding shortages, to take on a far higher volume of work than he could cope with. He suffered several weeks of being unable to work owing to stress-related illness, but when he returned to work the local authority made little or no effort to improve his situation. The claimant then suffered another long period of illness, and was eventually dismissed by his employer. The High Court awarded the claimant substantial damages for wrongful dismissal.
The employer offered a number of defences, none or which were accepted by the court. First, it argued that it had no reason to foresee that the claimant would suffer psychiatric injury. While the Court accepted that this might have been the case in respect of the first period of illness, when the claimant returned to work it was perfectly clear that he was at risk, and that another nervous breakdown would probably end his career. The second line of defence was that the claimant was unusually susceptible to stress, and that a normal person would not have been so badly affected. The Court held that there is ample precedent that the standard of care expected of an employer is raised if the employer knows that an employee is more likely to suffer injury. In Paris v Stepney BC [1951] AC 367, the House of Lords had ruled that an employee who was blind in one eye was entitled to a higher level of eye protection than a normally-sighted person, the consequence of an eye injury being so much higher. A third defence was that, at a matter of policy, it was unreasonable to expect the local authority to hire someone else to share the claimant's workload. The authority has only a limited budget, and it would be impossible to hire enough staff that no-one would be overworked. This argument was also rejected by the Court -- it was simply unreasonable for a local authority to systematically overwork its staff, and then plead funding shortages when they became ill.
After Walker there was a rapid increase in the number of cases of workplace stress cases coming before the courts, and a certain lack of uniformity of approach soon became apparent. In Sutherland v Hatton [2002] EWCA Civ 76, the Court of Appeal heard four conjoined appeal cases. The facts of these particular cases are not all that important (three out of the four claims were upheld); what is important is the general principles set out by the Court for guidance in future cases. Here is a summary.
In short, it seems reasonably well settled that an employer will be exposed to liability if he fails to take reasonable steps to safeguard the mental well-being of his or her staff. The employer is not expected to be omniscient, but is expected to recognize obvious warning signs. If an employee is known to be at risk, the employer cannot protected himself by claiming that a person of reasonable fortitude would be able to cope; the employer has a duty to hire people of the required temperament, having regard to the rigours of the work. However, the employer is not required to eliminate all risk; no human endeavour is entirely without risk. What is important is that the steps taken by the employer to protect the employees against stress-related illness are commensurate with the scale of the risk.
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