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wholly outside the scope of his employment, for his own benefit and at a place to which
he was not authorised to go, was not totally debarred from recovering damages.
Responsibility was therefore apportioned on the basis of 20% to the defendants and
80%
to the plaintiff.
The case offers guidance on "safe by position" under the Factories Act and "of such
construction". The Court held that it should be foreseeable, when deciding to rely on
safety by position or construction rather than guarding, that a workman may be stupid
in his behaviour. The fact that an employee would be acting outside the scope of his
employment is not relevant to this matter. In this particular case he was supposedly
trying to catch a pigeon. He climbed onto a cabinet, which housed dangerous machinery,
and fell in due to it being unguarded. Although he won his action, the compensation
awarded was reduced to one fifth due to contributory negligence. Useful in relation to
contributory negligence, but otherwise this section of the Factories Act has been
replaced by the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.
Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995] – employer’s duty of care in
relation to mental ill health caused by excessive workload
Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995]
Stress - ‘Breach of its duty of care in failing to take reasonable steps to avoid exposing
the employee to a health endangering workload.’
Established the precedent that an employer can be held liable for mental injury to an
employee caused by work-related stress.
The plaintiff, a social worker in charge of a team of field workers had reported his
stress, arising out of a greatly increased workload handling child abuse cases, to his
superiors and suggested a restructuring of services. This was refused and the plaintiff
suffered a nervous breakdown. On his return to work the plaintiff was given to
understand that he would have an assistant to ease his workload, but it transpired that
this assistant was only intermittently available. He suffered a second breakdown and
had to retire.
The council was found to have breached its duty in respect of the second nervous
breakdown, though not the first. After the first breakdown, it had notice of the
particular risk facing the plaintiff and could have taken steps to reduce the stress, by
reducing his workload and providing greater assistance. The court accepted that this
could have caused some disruption to other services provided by the council, but this
did not outweigh the obligation to protect the plaintiff against a serious risk to his
health.
The decision is distinguishable, but what matters is the view that an employer can be
under a duty of care to provide an employee with assistance, of uncertain scope and
duration, to enable him to perform his contractual duties.
