WRULD Claims heard in England, Scotland and Wales

References to and/or interpretations of Health and Safety Regulations - Lacey - v - Shropshire Career Service

Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992
	Contextual Commentary | Lacey - v - Shropshire Career Service | Find Other Cases

In this County Court Judgment on the 16th January 2003, HH Judge Krikler says, starting at paragraph 3:

The claim was really based on both breaches of statutory duty and also on allegations of negligence. One of the allegations of negligence is that they were negligent in that they failed to appreciate that giving her excessive amounts of work was going to cause this sort of injury.

In many ways it is an unusual case because clearly these employers were very concerned indeed about Mrs. Lacey. I have heard from her line manager, Mr. Thomas, and really it is not one of those cases where she was being treated harshly or driven to do excessive amounts of work. Mr. Thomas seems to have gone out of his way to say to her: "If you feel that you are overdoing it please slow down". She was certainly faster than the other typist who was employed there, the fellow typist, Valerie Lambert, and she felt because she was doing more she really ought to be doing less. She never made any formal complaints, that is she never put anything in writing, but she did indicate verbally to Mr. Thomas that she thought she was doing a bit too much. His immediate reaction to her was to say to her: "Well, do not overdo it". In other words, putting the ball back in her Court and saying: "If you think that you are doing too much take a break".

[Counsel for the Claimant] has pointed to regulations which indicate that the employer really ought to do more than that and enforce breaks but she was a part-time employee and it was a fairly informal office by all accounts. She was entitled to go and make herself tea if she wanted to, others did. There was no formal arrangement for tea breaks or anything of that sort, but there is no suggestion that she was being slave driven, as it were, and had to keep her nose to the grindstone or her shoulder to the wheel, or any other analogy that one thinks of. She was doing a job with pleasant people around her, with a line manager who clearly was concerned for her well-being, and most certainly was not pressing her to overdo it, far from it.

Really the suggestion that she was being overloaded is one that fails to fall on fertile soil today. On the other hand she does have other complaints and it is suggested that apart from any breach of statutory duty that the system of work was unsafe because she was not given an adequate work station. Of course, quite often that which is a breach of statutory duty also happens to be something which falls into the other category as well. Breaches of statutory duty and negligence are not mutually exclusive and an unsafe system of work is an unsafe system of work, quite often for the very reason that statutory regulations have not been complied with .....

HH Judge Krikler then says, starting at paragraph 7:

Whilst I am not satisfied that she was being overloaded with work I am satisfied that there was something wrong with the work station that she had ........................ It is not disputed here that the work station left something to be desired. It really was not until such time as the matter came to the attention of Mrs. Vincent, who was the Human Resources Manager and the Personnel Advisor and, indeed, the advisor on Health and Safety matters, that she came on the scene.

In short what she did was to improve the work station so that it complied with the statutory requirements. That she did by providing a new typist's chair. That was an adjustable chair. She also got two monitor blocks to raise the height of the VDU monitor, and she got an adjustable copy holder attached to the side of the VDU monitor. That is not perhaps a major matter because she was a competent touch typist who apparently was not one of those who had to look at the keyboard as well as the monitor at the same time but she also was given a keyboard platform wrist rest.

Really the effect of all that was undoubtedly to bring about an improvement in her system of work and in the conditions under which she worked. It was also clearly recognized by Mrs. Vincent, because of the memo that I have already referred to, that there were already muscular skeletal problems being suffered by Mrs. Lacey as one of the typists in the office.

HH Judge Krikler then says, at paragraphs 11 & 12:

Now [Counsel for the Defendant] says that clearly there was a breach of Duty. He accepts that the chair that was originally provided was not adjustable. It therefore presupposed that all typists were the same size and height, and so on, and it really ought to have been an adjustable chair so that she could have sat in a comfortable position vis-a-vis her approach to the keyboard.

[Counsel for the Defendant] goes on to say that is not enough. Merely to prove that there has been a breach of duty does not go anything like far enough from the claimant's point of view. There must be a causal connection between the breach of duty and the injury. If the injury is not caused by the breach of duty but is due to some underlying pathology then that is not sufficient to get the claimant home in an action for damages. Of course, [Counsel for the Defendant] is, as one would expect, absolutely right. There must be a causal connection between a breach of duty or an act of negligence and the injury.

After reviewing the medical evidence, HH Judge Krikler says, at paragraph 16:

I have therefore come to the conclusion that this was an injury that was work related. There was undoubtedly a breach of statutory duty in that the work station was inadequate for the reasons that Mrs. Vincent mentioned and Mrs. Vincent clearly set about remedying those deficiencies and provided the claimant with better conditions in compliance with statutory requirement. Unfortunately by then Mrs. Lacey had already suffered the pain and had continued to be aggravated by attempts to resume the sort of work, even though by now she had been given better conditions.

Then, at paragraph 18, HH Judge Krikler says:

At the end of the day she clearly has suffered from that breach of duty and the failure to provide her with a safe system of work. I think that there was definitely a causal connection between the unsatisfactory work station and her symptoms. I accept that as a proposition of law [Counsel for the Defendant] is absolutely right, there has to be that causal connection, but I find as a fact that there was a causal connection between the work that she was doing and the injury she suffered.

V1.01

Last updated: 14/05/2013