Employers' liability -from physical to psychiatric illnesses

• Autore: Carby-Hall J.
• Pagine: 85-90

Employers’ liability –from physical to psychiatric

illnesses

C-H J.

Introduction.

It is pure joy and a great honour to have been invited to write a chapter in a

liber amicorum to celebrate an excellent friend’s and colleague’s scholarly life,

namely that of Bruno Veneziani, with whom this author has worked over many

years. It is hoped that Bruno will appreciate the contents of this chapter which

treat an important development which has taken place in the United Kingdom

in recent years in the eld of the employer’s common law duty of care. Within

the strict parameters placed by the editors of this volume it is proposed to

analyse briey the well established concept of the employer’s common law duty

of care towards his employees which, until recently, applied generally only to

physical injuries and illnesses. The development of this concept in recent years

into the psychiatric eld is a welcome step forward and shows how labour law

has progressed and is progressing in the 21st century. This work proposes to

continue this author’s conversation with Bruno which originated from one of our

SOCRATES volume mentioned below.

The employers’ common law duty of care in respect of physical illnesses.

The law relating to employers’ liability spans over a period of some two

hundred years1. In the modern common law the employer owes the employee a

non-delegable duty of care.2 This means that the employer has to take reasonable

care for the health, safety and welfare of the employee. Such duty to take

reasonable care is automatically incorporated into the contract of employment

whether or not it is specically stated therein. Furthermore, the duty of care is

owed individually to each employee. In Paris v Stepney Borough Council,3 the

House of Lords4 held the employer liable for not providing goggles to a one eyed

employee (even though goggles were not provided to two eyed employees) who

was injured in the good eye thus making him totally blind. The employer’s duty

of care being an individual one, greater safety precautions needed to be taken

towards vulnerable employees.

It is important to note that the common law duty of care is owed by an

employer towards an employee and not to any other type of worker. The courts

have battled over many years and formulated numerous tests in order to establish

the distinction between an employee working under a contract of service5 and

an independent contractor working under a contract for services. Limitations of

space do not allow for a discussion on this important distinction and the reader

is thus referred elsewhere.6