Mullen v Accenture Services Ltd.

Employers are liable for psychiatric injury caused by work-related stress only where illness to the particular employee was reasonably foreseeable and the employer failed to take reasonable care. General workplace stress, long hours or awareness of occupational pressure do not establish foreseeability of psychiatric illness. There must be sufficiently clear indications of impending harm to health. A workplace risk-assessment breach does not remove that requirement.

Bullying requires an objective assessment of the conduct, viewed with any apparent vulnerability of the target. Strong or blunt management, unpleasantness and inappropriate language do not necessarily amount to actionable bullying. A statutory breach under regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 does not create automatic liability for psychiatric illness.

The claimant suffered a mental breakdown while employed by the defendant management consultancy. He alleged that he had been bullied and victimised by managers, that excessive workplace stress caused psychiatric injury, and that the defendant had breached regulations 3 and 4 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

The central issues were whether the conduct amounted to bullying, whether psychiatric illness caused by workplace stress was reasonably foreseeable, whether the defendant had breached its common-law duty of care, and whether regulation 3 created liability without proof of foreseeability of the particular illness.

1. Bullying. The court assessed the alleged conduct objectively. The claimant’s subjective perception was insufficient. The conduct involved forceful management, blunt language and inappropriate banter, but it was not genuinely offensive and unacceptable behaviour and did not cross the line into bullying.
2. Work-related stress. Applying the practical propositions in Hatton v Sutherland [2002] EWCA Civ 76, the claimant’s breakdown was caused by work-related stress. However, the defendant neither knew nor ought reasonably to have known that he was particularly vulnerable to stress-induced illness or that he faced an imminent breakdown. The breakdown surprised those who worked with him, and there were no sufficiently clear warning signs.
3. The foreseeability threshold concerns psychiatric illness to the particular employee, not merely stress, overwork or a general awareness that work may affect mental health. The existence of a career counsellor or confidential support arrangement is relevant but does not automatically discharge the duty.
4. Statutory regulations. Regulation 4 was immaterial because the complaint was that no preventive or protective measures had been implemented. Even if regulation 3 had been breached, it would not dispense with foreseeability of the particular illness or with causation. The court rejected the submission that any employee suffering psychiatric illness at a workplace with a defective risk assessment would thereby be entitled to compensation.
5. The claim therefore failed. The court made no operative award of damages. It nevertheless indicated that, if liability had been established, general damages would have been assessed at £8,000, agreed loss of earnings to December 2007 at £10,000, and continuing loss of earnings, on a broad and uncertain assessment, at £50,000.