The claimant suffered a back injury lifting materials from a van during a stock take.
Held: The court considered the issue of causation under the Regulations. Longmore LJ said: ‘This is not a separate hurdle for the employee, granted that the onus is on the employer to prove that he took appropriate steps to reduce the risk to the lowest level practicable. If the employer does not do that, he will usually be liable without more ado It is possible to imagine a case when an employer could show that, even if he had taken all practicable steps to reduce the injury (though he had not done so), the injury would still have occurred e.g. If the injury was caused by a freak accident or some such thing: but the onus of so proving must be on the employer to show that that was the case, not on the employee to prove the negative proposition that, if all possible precautions had been taken, he would not have suffered any injury.’
Judges:
Ward, Longmore, Patten LJJ
Citations:
[2012] EWCA Civ 642, [2012] ICR D 34
Links:
Statutes:
Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992$
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Hampshire Police v Taylor CA 9-May-2013
The officer had been cut by glass when clearing out a cannabis factory. The risk assessment had identified only a need for latex gloves. She said that given the environment heavier garden gloves should have been provided. The Chief Constable . .
Cited – Sloan v The Governors of Rastrick High School CA 29-Jul-2014
The claimant appealed against dismissal of her claim for personal injuries. She was employed as a teaching assistant providing support for children with mobility issues. She said that she suffered a soft tissue injury in her cervical spine and in . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Personal Injury
Updated: 22 October 2022; Ref: scu.457818