Employer's liability

Question 0

Wilsons&Clyde v English

Answer 0

Common law duty of care encompasses duty to provide (1) competent staff (2) adequate material (3) proper system of work and supervision (4) safe place of work

Question 1

Ready Mixed Concrete v Minister of Pensions

Answer 1

Distinguish employees from independent contractors. Employees agree that in consideration of a wage or other remuneration they will provide their own work and skill in the performance of some service for their employer and that in the performance of that service they will be subject to another person’s control in a sufficient degree to make that person the employer. Further, teh other provisions of the contract are consistent with its being a contract of services (opposed to a contract for services)

Question 2

Hudson v Ridge Manufacturing

Answer 2

An employer owns an employee a duty to provide the employee with competent fellow workers

Question 3

Latimer v AEC

Answer 3

The employer owes a duty to an employee to take reasonable steps to provide a safe place of work.
Notice overlap with OLA 1957

Question 4

Barber v Somerset

Answer 4

The duty to provide a safe system of work can extend to an employee who has suffered stress as a result of his work

Question 5

Paris v Stepney (employer’s liability)

Answer 5

An employer will be in breach of its duty if it fails to meet the standard of care to be expected of a reasonable employer in its position

Question 6

Caswell v Powell Duffryn

Answer 6

In assessing contributory negligence on the side of the employee, an allowance will be made for employees working in noisy conditions and doing repetitive work

Question 7

Lister v Hesley

Answer 7

an employer can be vicariously liable for an intentional wrongful act committed purely for an employee’s benefit where there is a sufficient connection between the work he had been employed to do and the acts in question

Question 8

Joel v Morison

Answer 8

If an employee is acting outside his course of employment when he commits a tort, he is often said to be ‘on a frolic of his own’

Question 9

Lonrho v Shell Petroleum

Answer 9

A breach of statutory duty is actionable in tort if the relevant statute protects a limited ascertainable class rather than the public generally