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You may be interested to know that Lady Justice Hale in the case of Hatton v Sutherland laid down 16 propositions support by her Co-Judges that would need for the most part to be met to be successful in a claim for stress against an employer and I thought you might be interested them, because the moral of the story is if you don't tell your boss that you are feeling stressed and why (if it is work related) it is unlikely that you will be able to bring a successful claim for stress.
Here are the 16 propositions
- There are no special mechanisms
applying to claims for psychiatric (or physical illness) or injury arising
from the stress of doing the work the employee is required to do.
- The threshold question is whether
this kind of harm to this particular employee was reasonably
foreseeable? This has two
components:
(a) an injury to health (as distinct from
occupational stress) which:
(b) is attributable to stress at work (as
distinct from other factors).
3. Foreseeability depends upon what the employer
knows (or ought reasonably to know) about the individual employee. Because of the nature of mental disorder, it
is harder to foresee than physical injury, but may be easier to foresee in a
known individual than in the population at large. An employer is usually entitled to assume
that the employee can withstand the normal pressures of the job unless he knows
of some particular problem or vulnerability.
4. The test is the same whatever the
employment: there are no occupations
which should be regarded as intrinsically dangerous to mental health.
5. Factors likely to be relevant in answering the
threshold question include:
(a) the nature and extent of the work done by
the employee. Is the workload much more
than is normal for the particular job?
Is the work particularly intellectually or emotionally demanding for
this employee? Are the demands being
made on this employee reasonable when compared with the demands made of others
in the same or comparable jobs? What are
the signs that others doing this job are suffering harmful levels of stress? Is there an abnormal level of sickness or
absenteeism in the same job or the same department?
(b) signs from the employee of impending harm
to health. Has he a particular problem or vulnerability? Has he already suffered from illness
attributable to stress at work? Have
there recently been frequent or prolonged absences which are uncharacteristic
of him? Is there reason to think that
these are attributable to stress at work, for example because of complaints or
warnings from him or others?
6. The employer is generally entitled to take
what he is told by his employee at face value, unless he has good reason to
think to the contrary. He does not
generally have to make searching enquiries of the employee or seek permission
to make further enquiries of his medical advisors.
7. To trigger a duty to take steps, the
indications of impending harm to health arising from stress at work must be
plain enough for any reasonable employer to realise that he should do something
about it.
8. The employer is only in breach of duty if he
has failed to take the steps which are reasonable in the circumstances, bearing
in mind the magnitude of the risk of
harm occurring, the gravity of the harm which may occur, the costs and practicability
of preventing it, and the justifications for running the risk.
9. The size and scope of the employer’s
operation, its resources and the demands it faces are relevant in deciding what
is reasonable; these include the
interests of other employees and the need to treat them fairly, for example, in
any redistribution of duties.
10. An employer can only reasonably be expected to
take steps which are likely to do some good, the court is likely to need expert
evidence on this.
11. An employer who offers a confidential advice
service, with referral to appropriate counselling or treatment services, is
unlikely to be found in breach of duty.
12. If the only reasonable and effective step would
have been to dismiss automatically the
employee, the employer will not be in breach of duty in allowing a willing
employee to continue in the job.
13. In all cases, therefore, it is necessary to
identify the steps which the employer both could and should have taken before finding him in breach of
his duty of care.
14. The claimant must show that the breach of duty
has caused or materially contributed to the harm suffered. It is not enough to show the occupational
stress has caused the harm.
15. Where the harm suffered has more than one cause
the employer should only pay for that proportion of the harm suffered which is
attributable to his wrongdoing, unless the harm is truly indivisible. It is for the defendant to raise the question
of apportionment.
16. The assessment of damage will take account of
any pre-existing disorder or vulnerability and of the chance that the claimant
would have succumbed to a stress related disorder in any event.
