O’Neill v DSG Retail Ltd

Under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, the existence of a risk must be assessed by reference to the task, workplace and employee, rather than the precise chain of events causing the accident. A real and foreseeable possibility of injury is sufficient. Where manual handling cannot reasonably be avoided, the employer must take appropriate steps to reduce the risk to the lowest level reasonably practicable. That duty may require training which the employer itself has designed and recognised as necessary. A claimant’s instinctive reaction does not necessarily break causation. The court must first identify the breach and then ask whether it caused the injury.

The claimant, a warehouse manager, injured his back while carrying a microwave oven and twisting in response to a colleague’s call. His employer had supplied written guidance but had not provided the practical manual-handling training or training video required by its own policy.

The county court dismissed the claim, finding that the reaction was wholly unexpected and that no training could have prevented the accident. The claimant appealed, alleging errors concerning the applicability and breach of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, foreseeability and causation.

Appeal allowed. The Court of Appeal held that the county court had approached the issues in the wrong order and had failed to make essential findings.

1. The relevant regulatory threshold was whether the manual-handling task involved a real and foreseeable possibility of injury. The assessment had to consider the particular task in its workplace context and the particular employee. It was not necessary to foresee the precise interruption, movement or sequence that caused the injury.
2. Regulation 4(1)(a) and regulation 4(1)(b) were complementary but mutually exclusive. This was not a case in which the need for manual handling could reasonably have been avoided. Manual handling was inherent in the claimant’s warehouse duties, so regulation 4(1)(b)(ii) applied.
3. The employer’s own documents and training arrangements recognised the risk of twisting while supporting a load. The conceded failure to provide practical training and show the training video established a breach of regulation 4(1)(b)(ii), because the employer had not reduced the risk to the lowest level reasonably practicable.
4. The judge should then have considered causation against the nature of that breach. The unchallenged evidence was that appropriate training could alter instinctive behaviour and encourage an employee to pause before reacting to an unexpected event. The claimant’s existing knowledge and written instructions did not answer the causation question.
5. On the evidence, the failure to provide the training was a probable cause of the injury. It was not merely the occasion for the accident. The claim was therefore established in negligence and breach of statutory duty, and the appeal was allowed.

• Court of Appeal — Allowed the appeal from the judgment of Her Honour Judge Pearce in the Luton County Court, which had dismissed the personal-injury claim.