Employer Liable for Second Injury

14 July 2011

The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision of the lower court that the employer of a man who suffered a serious head injury in a workplace accident was also liable for a later injury when the man fell over after having had too much to drink (Dalling v R J Heale & Co Ltd.).

In 2005, Stephen Dalling was working for R J Heale & Co Ltd. as a ceiling fixer when he fell from a height of 15 feet and injured his head. As a result, he is unlikely ever to work again. As well as poor concentration and impaired memory, he has also suffered some loss of emotional control, is verbally aggressive and has a reduced ability to motivate himself or plan ahead. After the accident, he began drinking heavily.

In 2008, Mr Dalling sustained a further head injury when he fell over backwards in a public house. It was common ground that he was drunk at the time. Shortly afterwards, his partner gave him an ultimatum that unless he stopped drinking to excess, their relationship was over. Since that time, Mr Dalling has greatly reduced his alcohol intake.

When it came to the assessment of damages payable, the judge in the lower court heard that Mr Dalling only rarely drank to excess prior to the workplace accident. Although he had, on occasion, been physically and verbally aggressive when drunk, he had never been so drunk as to fall over. The judge accepted expert evidence that the initial head injury had a disinhibiting effect on Mr Dalling, reducing his ability to control his drinking habit, and had also reduced his alcohol tolerance level.

Based on the factual and medical evidence, the judge held that Mr Dalling’s impairments and associated difficulties following the accident in 2005 played a causative part in his drinking to excess in 2008. In his view, it would be firstly somewhat artificial and secondly simply unfair to regard the later accident as having been in substance brought about by Mr Dalling and not at all by his employer. He therefore found that Mr Dalling should bear only one third of the responsibility for the accident in 2008.

R J Heale & Co appealed against the decision to award any damages for the second accident. The company argued that the judge had failed to take into account Mr Dalling’s ability to control his drinking. The evidence that he was capable of doing so rendered his decision to get drunk an act of free volition, which could either be said to break the chain of causation or to be no part of it. The company further contended that if it were deemed responsible for the second head injury – on the basis that Mr Dalling was not capable of a free act of volition – the decision that Mr Dalling had contributed to it was illogical.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that it was clear that the judge thought that both parties bore significant responsibility for the second accident. Whilst the earlier injury had not completely destroyed Mr Dalling’s ability to control his drinking, it had impaired it so that his action in getting drunk was not entirely an act of free volition. Furthermore, there was nothing illogical in the judge’s view that the second injury was partly the fault of R J Heale & Co and partly the fault of Mr Dalling himself.

For more information on this subject or any other legal matter,
please contact us:

Tonbridge: 01732 770660
Sevenoaks: 01732 747900
Email: marketing@warners-solicitors.co.uk