John Hill v Ministry of Justice

An employer must take reasonable care against a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury. The assessment is objective and context-specific. It must consider the baseline risk inherent in the work, the particular person or task, the purpose of the activity, available resources and the effectiveness and practicability of precautions.

Occupations involving inherent dangers attract no special lower standard of care. A risk need not be high, exceptional or imminent before precautions are required, but additional measures are necessary only where the specific risk materially exceeds the baseline risk addressed by the ordinary system of work. The adequacy of precautions is highly fact-sensitive. The actual circumstances of an accident may have limited relevance to assessing the nature and level of the foreseeable risk.

The claimant, a probationary prison officer, suffered a spinal injury when a young offender pushed him during a solo escort of two prisoners. The County Court dismissed his personal injury claim after a preliminary liability trial, finding that the prisoner did not present a specific or imminent risk requiring two officers or sequential escorting.

On appeal, the claimant argued that the Recorder had applied an excessively demanding test of foreseeability, wrongly considered the actual assault, and failed to require readily available precautions. The central issues were the proper assessment of foreseeable risk in a custodial workplace and whether the findings on breach and causation could stand.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Recorder’s findings on breach were not vitiated by legal error.
2. An employer’s duty is to take reasonable care against a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury. Foreseeability is objective and requires an intense focus on the circumstances of the individual case. The precise manner of the accident need not be foreseeable if an accident of that general kind is foreseeable.
3. The same common-law principles apply to inherently dangerous public-service occupations. The relevant assessment balances the level and likelihood of risk, the potential consequences, the effectiveness and practicability of precautions, their expense and inconvenience, the purpose of the activity and available resources.
4. In a prison, the ordinary system addresses a baseline risk of violence and disruption. The question is whether, having regard to the particular prisoner or prisoners, the task, its purpose and available resources, the risk at the relevant time was sufficiently above that baseline to require additional or alternative measures. A high, exceptional or imminent risk threshold would be erroneous.
5. The Recorder was entitled to consider the actual circumstances of the assault to the limited extent that they illuminated the nature of the risk. The finding that the prisoners had acted pursuant to a plan to barricade themselves, while laughing and joking, supported the conclusion that staff had no warning of an elevated risk of fighting or assault during the escort.
6. The assessment of precautions was fact-sensitive. Although two officers or sequential escorting would have reduced the risk, neither was reasonably necessary on the findings made. The authorities concerning prisoners or patients presenting persistent exceptional risks did not require that approach for this prisoner.
7. The Recorder’s alternative causation finding was logically inconsistent with the finding that the prisoners’ plan required both prisoners to enter the cell. If breach had been established, sequential escorting would have prevented the incident as well as the deployment of a second officer. The amendment to challenge causation would have been allowed, and that ground would have succeeded, but breach was not established.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): appeal from the County Court at Birmingham dismissed. Permission to appeal had been granted on 12 November 2021.
• County Court at Birmingham: Recorder Bright QC dismissed the personal injury claim after a three-day preliminary trial on liability, by order dated 17 April 2021.