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Workplace Stress: THE LEGAL ESSENTIALS -
The summaries of cases on these pages illustrate developments in the Law of Workplace Stress 1999 to 2007.
Foreseeability: Working Conditions
Foreseeability: Reasonable Steps
Foreseeability: Evidence: Notice of Psychiatric Injury
Foreseeability: Contributory Negligence
Foreseeability: Excessive Workload
Foreseeability: Arrangements for Return to Work
Victim classification: Employee Witnessing Colleague’s Death
Victim classification: Post-
Constructive dismissal: Implied Term to take Reasonable Care for Health and Safety of Employees
Constructive Dismissal: Medical Evidence
Unfair Dismissal: Cause of Illness
Unfair Dismissal: Employment Tribunal: Compensation for Personal Injury
Unfair dismissal: Common Law Remedy
Disability Discrimination: Anxiety Disorder: Medical Evidence
Disability Discrimination: Disability: Medical Diagnosis
Disability Discrimination: Disability: Evidence of Mental Impairment
Damages: Causation: Exacerbation of Pre-
Damages: Quantum: Bullying at Work
Post-
Damages: Quantum: Anxiety Resulting from Minor Physical Injury
Post-
Service Personnel: Safe System of Work
Employment Tribunal Procedure: Postponement of Hearing: Medical Evidence
Foreseeability: Race Discrimination
Breach of Contract: Unfair Dismissal
Knowledge of Employer: Special Educational Needs School Teacher
Foreseeability: Stress Reduction Policy
Vicarious Liability: Breach of Statutory Duty: Harassment
Psychiatric Injury: Harassment: Foreseeability
Stress: Duty of Care Owed: Foreseeability
Stress: Duty of Care Owed: Workload
Stress: Foreseeability: Vicarious Liability
Psychiatric Injury: Foreseeability: Duty of Care
Post-
Post-
Stress:duty of Care Owed: Workload
Psychiatric Injury: Foreseeability: Duty of Care
Post-
Disability Discrimination Update
April 2008
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Case Examples -
Sex Discrimination Disability Discrimination Workplace Stress Harassment & Bullying Employment Tribunals
Publications -
Workplace Stress: Definition
The widest definition of “stress” is anything which makes a person tense, angry, frustrated or unhappy.
This clearly includes workplace pressures. Stress is said to result from a state of imbalance between the demands expressed by individuals and their capacity to adjust to those demands. Where demands are beyond a person’s capacities, then a state of stress is likely to result.
In 1991 Ichiro Oshima, an employee of a Japanese advertising agency, committed suicide at the age of 24. He had been employed by the agency for 16 months. He had never had a day off and slept on average between 30 minutes and two hours each night. He set three alarm clocks to wake him for work. A Japanese court ruled that he had committed suicide because of overwork. His employers were liable.
In 1993, C, a senior training manager, shot himself. He had been suffering from depression for some time and had been severely overworked. His family sued C’s employers on the basis that his suicide had been caused by workplace stress and that the employers had been negligent.
The Scottish court dismissed the application and made the following points:
• The employers owed C a duty to take reasonable care not to expose him to working conditions which were reasonably foreseeably likely to subject him to such stress as might cause him psychiatric injury.
• In the present case, the employers had not been in breach of their duty. They had limited knowledge of C’s illness.
• It had not been proved, on the balance of probabilities, that C’s work had caused his depressive illness.