Public Authority Liability Update: Can You Do It If You B&Q It?

Employer not found liable for stress in the workplace

Easton v B&Q Plc[2015] EWHC 880 (QB)

The facts

The Claimant, a B&Q employee, sought damages for psychiatric illness and consequential loss caused by workrelated stress.

He had been the manager of one of B&Q's stores when he started to suffer from depression and was absent from work for five months, before starting a phased return. A few days into the return, he was re-certified as unfit for work due to depression after he felt he came under pressure to accept an offer of a temporary post at another branch. B&Q accepted that the Claimant had suffered a psychiatric illness and that the illness, at least in substantial measure, was caused by occupational stress. However, it argued that the illness had not been foreseeable at any stage and that it did not breach any duty.

Held

In claims for psychiatric illness or injury arising from the stress of doing the work an employee was required to do, the question was whether the kind of harm had been reasonably foreseeable, which depended upon what the employer knew or ought reasonably to have known about the employee.

In the instant case, the Claimant's claim in respect of his first breakdown was bound to fail at the first hurdle of foreseeability. He had spent his 10-year managerial career in charge of large retail outlets and had had no history at all of any psychiatric or psychological problems. Nothing about him gave anyone any clue that he might succumb to a psychiatric illness. All of those who knew him well at work had no idea that he might do so.

As to his relapse, it was true that the employer by then knew that he had suffered a...