C v Middlesbrough Council

Deliberate sexual abuse by an employee may be sufficiently connected with employment to make the employer vicariously liable, but that does not convert the intentional tort into a negligent breach-of-duty claim for limitation purposes. In the absence of a provable systemic negligence claim, a personal-injury claim based on such abuse falls outside section 11 and is subject to the non-extendable six-year period in section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980.

A negligence claim founded on inadequate social-work provision requires evidence of proper professional practice and causation. The reasonableness of safeguarding inquiries must be assessed by the information available at the time, without hindsight.

C alleged that he suffered psychiatric and consequential loss after sexual abuse by a teacher while he was a pupil at Saltergill School, a residential special school run by the council’s predecessors. He claimed both direct negligence in the council’s care and supervision, and vicarious liability for the teacher’s intentional abuse.

HHJ Paul Collins CBE found inadequate monitoring after C’s transfer to the school but found no causation. He also found that school staff had not negligently failed to identify the teacher as an abuser. He dismissed the vicarious claim as time-barred under section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980. C appealed those findings and the limitation ruling.

Disposition

The Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the appeal. Latham LJ gave the judgment, with Sir Swinton Thomas and Chadwick LJ agreeing.

1. The challenge to the direct-negligence claim failed. There was no expert evidence on proper social-work practice to establish that failure to allocate an independent social worker on C’s transfer to the school was itself a breach of duty. The trial judge’s finding that any established shortcomings had not caused the claimed damage was supported by the evidence.

2. The trial judge was entitled to find that the school had not breached its duty in relation to the teacher. The head teacher knew of certain matters, including occasional visits by boys to the teacher’s room, home visits and concerns about cigarettes or presents. He had investigated and warned the teacher when matters arose. It would be a serious hindsight error to combine those matters, after the abuse was known, into a conclusion that the school ought then to have suspected abuse. Minor imperfections in the trial judge’s treatment of particular evidence did not undermine his central and evidence-based finding that the head teacher acted reasonably.

3. The council was vicariously liable for the teacher’s abuse under Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2002] 1 AC 215. However, applying Stubbings v Webb [1993] AC 498 and the binding decision in KR and Others v Bryn Alyn Community Holdings [2003] EWCA Civ 85, the claim remained one for intentional trespass to the person. It did not fall within section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 merely by characterising the employee’s conduct as breach of a protective duty entrusted by the employer. No independent systemic negligence claim was established. The vicarious claim was therefore governed by section 2’s non-extendable six-year limitation period and was time-barred.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — dismissed C’s appeal: [2004] EWCA Civ 1746.
• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division) — HHJ Paul Collins CBE dismissed the direct-negligence claim for want of causation and the vicarious-liability claim as time-barred. The judge had disapplied section 11 under section 33(1) of the Limitation Act 1980 in relation to the direct claim.