Accident at work – or not, as the case may be

One of the most common causes of workplace accidents that the solicitors here at Camps come across is defective “work equipment”, which basically means an appliance, piece of apparatus, or an installation that is used by someone whilst at work. However, as one case from 2008 shows, defining what is and what isn’t work equipment can be a bit of a legal grey area.

The case in question involved a woman who was working as a carer and minibus driver for elderly people. One of the duties of this job required the woman to collect wheelchair-bound passengers from their homes and push them to her minibus. Whilst carrying out this duty one day in December 2004, the carer stepped on to an access ramp outside the house of one of her passengers. The ramp gave way and the woman fell, sustaining an injury. A later inspection found that the ramp had not been maintained since its installation in the 1990’s, and the wood had become rotten after being exposed to the elements.

At trial the carer’s legal team argued that the ramp was work equipment and that her employers had breached the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. The judge at this first trial found that the ramp was work equipment and that therefore there was a duty imposed on the carer’s employers, the local council, regarding maintenance and also liability for any injuries caused by the ‘work equipment’ whilst the carer was using it.

The local council launched an appeal arguing that the ramp was not work equipment for a number of reasons including; that the ramp had not been installed by the council and there was no way for the council to maintain it and that it was on private property and was mainly used by people who were not council employees. Lastly the council argued that the ramp was meant to be a permanent structure for use by everyone entering the property, as opposed to a temporary ramp designed specifically to be used by carers pushing someone in a wheelchair.

One of the main themes of the appeal was that the definition of what was work equipment and what wasn’t had been applied too broadly in this case. In fact the council argued that using the definition that the trial judge had come up with would mean that, for example, a delivery driver driving his/her van over a bridge that then collapsed would be able to make a compensation claim against his/her employer on the basis that the bridge was ‘work equipment’. The judge at the appeal decided it would be more reasonable to take into account whether an employer had any control over an item before assessing whether it constituted work equipment.

The basic outcomes of this particular case were that in claims involving injuries caused by work equipment, temporary structures (scaffolding, temporary ramps etc.) are said to be work equipment but permanent structures (such as the disabled access ramp in this case) may not be work equipment.