Richards v London Borough of Bromley

Under the common law and the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957, an occupier must take such care as is reasonable in all the circumstances to keep visitors reasonably safe. Foreseeability is assessed by reference to the particular injury and the circumstances in which it occurred, not merely by superficial similarity with an earlier incident. A trivial accident caused by a third party’s careless conduct did not make a materially different laceration injury reasonably foreseeable. The reasonableness of remedial measures and their timing must also be assessed in context, including the history of safe use, the nature of the risk, the practicality and risks of immediate works, and the proposed response. Not every accident on school premises therefore gives rise to liability.

Miss Richards, aged fifteen, was injured at school when an outward-opening self-closing door struck the back of her heel as she stepped down from a single step. She claimed damages from the local authority responsible for the school.

The Central London County Court dismissed the claim after a one-day trial on 24 January 2012. The appeal was confined to whether an earlier, trivial incident involving another pupil should have led the school to record and investigate it more fully, identify the mechanism of injury, and take further preventive measures. The central issue was whether that earlier incident made Miss Richards’s later laceration reasonably foreseeable and whether the school’s proposed remedial action and timetable were reasonable.

1. The appeal was dismissed unanimously. The respondent owed the claimant the common-law and statutory duty to take such care as was reasonable in all the circumstances to ensure that she was reasonably safe when using the premises.
2. The earlier incident did not make the claimant’s later injury reasonably foreseeable. The earlier pupil had been struck when another child carelessly opened the other door while she was hesitating on the step. The claimant’s injury occurred in materially different circumstances, without third-party intervention, when her heel was raised at the precise moment the self-closing door shut. The earlier incident therefore had only a superficial similarity to the later laceration.
3. The court declined to adopt the trial judge’s view that the later injury was impossible to predict. It was sufficient that the earlier injury did not render the later and more serious injury reasonably foreseeable. The court also accepted that, had the earlier incident been investigated in greater detail, the school would probably have responded in the same way and that response would have been reasonable.
4. Reasonableness had to be assessed in the context of the doors’ approximately thirty years of safe use by thousands of pupils and staff, the trivial nature of the earlier injury, and the risk actually revealed. The decision to raise the step, with the work scheduled for a school holiday because immediate works would themselves have created a serious hazard, was reasonable. Sympathy for the claimant could not replace the legal requirements of tort liability.

Lord Justices Munby and Maurice Kay agreed with Lord Justice Tomlinson.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal from the Central London County Court was dismissed. The judgment under appeal was made by His Honour Judge Carr on 24 January 2012 after a one-day trial.