Free Employment Advice - Foreseeability: Evidence: Notice of Psychiatric Injury

S was employed as a resident hall keeper. He claimed compensation for psychiatric illness from his employers. His claim was based on the allegation that he had developed a major depressive disorder resulting from the strain and pressure of his working conditions. These required him to work excessive hours continuously, often without pay, and led to additional demands being made on him by the public because he lived on the premises.

The evidence brought by S comprised two letters sent to his employers by his GP stating that he had suffered severe mental and physical stress because of the excessive hours which he had been working, and that his job situation had been a very major cause of this stress and extremely detrimental to his health, and he had needed fairly strong anti-depressants. S had had two meetings with the employers’ personnel officer who, following discussion of S’s work and health problems, stated that his hours of work would be reduced.

It was argued on S’s behalf that by receipt of the letters, the employers should have realised that his working conditions were such that he was exposed to a material risk of suffering psychiatric injury and that they should have taken steps to improve his situation.

On behalf of the employers, it was argued that the allegations did not give clear notice of the risk of psychiatric injury, because the first letter referred only to “stress” which was not in itself a psychiatric illness. If it was only at the stage of the second letter that the employers had adequate notice of risk, then S’s claim had to be limited to an exacerbation of an already existing psychiatric illness.

On S’s behalf, it was further argued that foreseeability of any form of injury, physical or psychiatric, was sufficient and there was a clear allegation that some harm was foreseeable from the reference in the GP’s letter to “physical stress”

The Scottish court ruled that the matter could proceed and made the following points:

• “Physical stress” did not denote a particular form of physical harm and the letter did not begin to suggest how working conditions might expose the claimant to the risk of physical injury.

• It could not be said from the pleadings alone that the claimant had no prospect of establishing that psychiatric illness was a foreseeable consequence of S’s working conditions.

• It was also possible that the second GP’s letter could itself provide the trigger for a case based on the exacerbation of an existing psychiatric illness.