Denton Hall Legal Services & Ors v Fifield

Employers’ duties under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 extend beyond the physical arrangement of equipment. A suitable and sufficient workstation assessment must address work organisation, breaks, changes of activity, repetitive tasks and workload. Employers must communicate relevant findings and intervene where working practices require alteration. Failure to provide required training, or to plan screen work so that it is periodically interrupted, may be causative of injury where competent compliance would probably have changed the employee’s working practices. The employee’s knowledge of risks does not transfer the employer’s regulatory responsibilities to the employee. Medical records recording a patient’s statements are hearsay as to the making and contents of those statements and cannot automatically be treated as independent factual evidence.

Kathryn Fifield, a secretary employed by Denton Hall Legal Services and related appellants for about 19 years, claimed damages for a work-related upper limb disorder. His Honour Judge Reid QC found that her condition was caused by the appellants’ negligence and breaches of the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992, including failures concerning workstation assessment, work organisation and training, together with a consequential breach of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992. He awarded £157,341.

The appeal challenged the findings that the injury was work related and that the regulatory breaches were causative. It also raised the proper evidential treatment of medical notes and reports recording the claimant’s account of symptom onset. The central issues were whether the judge was entitled to find a sufficient temporal connection between increased workload and the serious symptoms, and whether the regulatory failures materially contributed to the injury.

1. Appeal dismissed. Wall LJ held that the judge was entitled to find that the claimant’s more serious symptoms had a sufficient temporal connection with the increased workload. Symptom onset and timing were ultimately matters of fact for the judge, and the medical evidence, including Mr Eckersley’s oral evidence, provided substantial common ground. The judge’s findings were consistent with the pleaded case and supported by occupational-health material and the appellants’ own permanent-health-insurance application (paras 35–45).
2. Regulation 2 of the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 was not confined to physical equipment and the immediate environment. Its purpose included addressing known health problems associated with display-screen work. A construction limited to equipment and workstation ergonomics would make the provision ineffective. The judge was entitled to find the risk assessment inadequate because it failed meaningfully to address job design, breaks, repetitive tasks, workload and communication of wrist-pain findings (paras 61–64).
3. The employer’s duty was to intervene and alter working practices where necessary. It was insufficient to leave the employee to arrange breaks and manage the routine, particularly where training had not enabled her to appreciate the significance of those matters. The findings established breaches of regulations 4 and 6, and the failure to provide adequate training was causative because proper training would probably have materially altered the claimant’s working practices (paras 54, 59–67).
4. The judge’s conclusion that the injuries would not have occurred but for the statutory breaches and negligence was open on the evidence (paras 56–60, 68).
5. Buxton LJ added, citing North Australian v Goldsborough [1893] 2 Ch 381 at p 386, that a medical record of what a patient allegedly told a doctor is, unless properly proved or admitted, hearsay as to the making of the statement. If proved as a previous inconsistent statement, it ordinarily affects credibility rather than proving the truth of the recorded facts. A party seeking to contradict a pleaded factual case by medical records or reports should give advance notice, identify any dispute about accuracy, and decide whether formal proof is required. Failure to follow that procedure may make a trial judge reluctant to permit reliance on the records and may attract costs sanctions (paras 75–82). Parker LJ agreed with Wall LJ and Buxton LJ.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal from the Guildford County Court dismissed. The court upheld His Honour Judge Reid QC’s findings of work-related injury, breach of statutory duty and causation, and the award of £157,341: [2006] EWCA Civ 169.
• Guildford County Court: His Honour Judge Reid QC found liability for negligence and breach of statutory duty, awarded damages and ordered costs, including £100,000 on account.