MacLennan v Hartford Europe Ltd

In an employer’s stress-at-work claim, liability requires both medical causation and legal fault. The claimant must prove that work caused the illness and that the employer reasonably ought to have foreseen the particular kind of harm suffered. Long hours, overwork, difficult work, ordinary illnesses, or signs of reduced performance do not alone establish foreseeability. The indications of impending harm must be sufficiently clear to require a reasonable employer to act. An employer may generally assume that an employee can withstand normal job pressures and may take the employee’s statements at face value, unless there is good reason to think otherwise.

The claimant, an HR manager, alleged that workload and workplace stress caused chronic fatigue syndrome. She claimed that the defendant employer should have provided additional assistance and support because the risk of harm to her health was foreseeable.

The principal issues were whether work-related stress caused the claimant’s condition and, if so, whether the defendant knew or ought reasonably to have known that she was at risk of suffering that kind of illness.

1. Claim dismissed. The claimant failed on both medical causation and foreseeability.
2. The court applied the principles in Hatton v Sutherland [2002] EWCA Civ 76, as approved in Barber v Somerset County Council [2004] UKHL 13. The threshold question was whether injury to health, attributable to work-related stress, was reasonably foreseeable in the particular employee. The employer’s duty arose only when the indications of impending harm were sufficiently plain for a reasonable employer to realise that action was required.
3. Medical causation was not established. The evidence did not show that work-related stress had impaired the claimant’s immune system or that this had caused chronic fatigue syndrome. The claimant’s illnesses during 2005 were modest and unexceptional, and the principal expert evidence did not support the proposed causal chain.
4. Foreseeability was also not established. The claimant worked long hours and sometimes experienced difficult workplace events, but the number of hours worked could not, by itself, establish foreseeability. The relevant circumstances had to be considered in the round, including the nature of the work, the employee’s individual characteristics, and signs of impending harm.
5. The claimant had not told the defendant that work was affecting her health. Her references to workload, coping and stress concerned performance rather than a risk of physical or psychiatric illness. The defendant had no relevant knowledge of her psychiatric history and was entitled to take her conduct and statements at face value.
6. Accordingly, the defendant was neither shown to have caused the claimant’s condition nor to have been in breach of its duty of care.

First-instance judgment. No appellate history is stated in the judgment.