Free Employment Advice - Foreseeability: Work Overload

Ms Pratley was employed by S as a care manager. The work was known, by employers and employees, to involve significant pressure. From 1994 until 1996, Ms Pratley regularly worked long overtime hours and deliberately withheld information about the pressures which she was under and their effect on her health. She did not use the counselling service or the occupational health service which were available to S’s employees.

In August 1996, shortly before going on holiday, Ms Pratley told her manager that she feared for her health because of work pressures. The manager agreed to introduce a new system, known as a “stacking” system, to reduce the work overload. When Ms Pratley returned from holiday, the new system had not been introduced. Ms Pratley had a nervous breakdown. She ceased working and was dismissed in May 1998.

She claimed compensation from her employers on the basis that her breakdown had been caused by the employers’ failure to reduce her workload. At first instance, her claim was dismissed. It had not been reasonably foreseeable that Ms Pratley would suffer an immediate collapse if the stacking system was not introduced. Ms Pratley appealed to the Court of Appeal which dismissed the appeal on the following grounds:

• There was a difference between a risk of psychiatric injury arising through continuing work overload in the future, and a risk of collapse in the short term, arising from disappointment of a “cherished idea” developed as a result of a conversation between the employer and the employee about possible problems if a work overload were continuing. The harm in each case was psychiatric injury, but it occurred not only by different mechanisms but also at different times.

• In Ms Pratley’s case, what had been foreseen was a future risk if work overload continued. Her immediate collapse was unforeseen and unforeseeable. It was entirely reasonable for the employers to see how things were and how she felt on her return to work, before taking specific action.

• It could not be accepted that once the risk of future injury was foreseen, the employers ought reasonably to have taken steps to eliminate or to reduce that risk by introducing the new system by the time Ms Pratley returned from holiday.

Comment:

This is another decision in the chain of cases heard since the decision of the Court of Appeal in Sutherland v Hatton and Others.