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References to and/or interpretations of HSE Guidance Documents - Coley - v - Securicor Group plc

Work Related Upper Limb Disorders: A Guide to Prevention HSG60 1990
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In the Judgment at first instance on the 16th August 1996, at G on page 1, HH Judge Hardy says:

I have been referred to the publications issued by the government bodies at the time concerning tenosynovitis. None of them specifically refer to the counting of money, which is not surprising.

At C on page 3, HH Judge Hardy says:

That prolonged repetitive motions of the upper limbs can cause tenosynovitis has been recognised for not all that many years, but certainly in the recent past, certainly the seventies onwards. Hence, the government publication.

At F on page 4, HH Judge Hardy says:

The only matters which the employers would have before them at that time would be guidelines or information contained in the publications I have before me about repetitive types of tasks.

As I pointed out, none of them mention activities of the fingers or the counting of money. They do, of course, refer to repeated tasks in the upper limbs. A reasonable employer reading that information, faced with a situation which the employers were faced with in August 1990, would not, in my view, be placed under an obligation to say to the plaintiff: "You should not do that amount of work" or "There may be a risk of that amount of work causing you problems with tenosynovitis."

In the Court of Appeal Judgment on the 3rd February 1998, at D on page 4, Mr Justice Moore-Bick states:

There was also before the court evidence in the form of health and safety executive publications which had been published well before 1990 dealing with tenosynovitis and upper limb disorders resulting from certain types of occupation, but it is fair to say that none of them suggest that work of this particular kind is likely to cause injury of this nature.

At E on page 7, Mr Justice Moore-Bick states:

In fact, the only information available to the defendants was that contained in the publications of the Health and Safety Executive which I have already mentioned, but these did not alert them to the risk of injury associated with a task of this kind.

In the Court of Appeal Judgment on the 3rd February 1998, starting at F on page 10, Lord Justice Simon Brown states:

The real question is whether without the benefit of that expertise the defendants should have perceived a sufficient potential risk to have at any rate sought such advice. All the plaintiff can rely on in this regard are the 1977 and 1990 Health and Safety publications, to which my Lord has referred. Those, to my mind, fall far short of compelling the conclusion that reasonable employers would necessarily have been alerted to the risk. The 1977 guidance was confined to consideration of "over-use of the wrist and forearm during repetitive operations". The 1990 guide to prevention of work related upper limb disorders was certainly more generalised and expansive, but, in my judgment, that too was not such as necessarily to have put a reasonable employer on notice.

That being the position, there was, in my judgment, every reason for the judge to reject and little basis for him to have accepted the plaintiff's case on reasonable foreseeability.

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Last updated: 14/05/2013