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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Jones v Home Office [2002] EWCA Civ 623 (27 March 2002) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/623.html Cite as: [2002] EWCA Civ 623 |
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAL
Strand London WC2 Wednesday, 27th March 2002 |
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B e f o r e :
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JONES | ||
Applicant | ||
- v - | ||
HOME OFFICE | ||
Respondent |
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Smith Bernal Reporting Limited, 190 Fleet Street,
London EC4A 2HD
Tel: 0171 421 4040
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
The Respondent was not represented and did not attend
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Crown Copyright ©
"I could find no medical evidence that this man hurt his back while in Her Majesty's Prison, but such might have been the case. If the injury occurred I would expect it to be no more than a sprain with painful symptoms settling within three months, but allowing some 12 months aching. I do not believe that his current problems stem from the accident that might have occurred in July 1996."
"On the facts, first of all, I am not satisfied on the balance of probability that injury occurred in the way Mr Jones describes. I have already identified the factors which lead me to that conclusion, notably the total absence of any complaint about it at any stage to anybody, particularly no reference to it to any of the subsequent medical officers who examined him. Secondly, the inconsistency between his description of his later symptoms and the other surrounding evidence leads me to be very wary of accepting his totally unsupported account of how the accident occurred. Secondly, [(sic)] even if it did occur as he described I see no basis for an allegation of negligence against the Prison Service. If he had been required to lift an item weighing 1 cwt. above his head to a height of 7' or more and had injured himself doing so, a basis of liability would be obvious but on the evidence the stack was in fact nowhere near that high, there is no adequate evidence that the bag was anywhere near that heavy even on his own account. He had only just lifted it off the floor in any event so it was not a case that his back was injured by lifting to an excessive height. That there was not a risk assessment by then is clear but when one was carried out there is no evidence whatever that the working practices adopted in this prison system have been altered in any way, so there is no basis for alleging that a risk assessment would have prevented the accident. No one else has ever been injured, at least there is no evidence that anyone has been, and the accident record book has been produced.
The regulations, it is worthy of note, refer to:
`within the limits of reasonable practicability the employer must avoid the need for an employee to undertake any manual handling operation at work which involves a risk of him being injured and it has been held that a risk of injury arose if it was established that injury was a foreseeable possibility rather than a likelihood.'
That is a quotation from Charlesworth and Percy on Negligence at page 803 of the 10th Edition.
In my view, given the way the laundry was run by Mr Turner, given the instructions he gave Mr Jones to get help if it was too heavy and the height of the stack, I would not have thought that lifting a bag of up to 50 kg. off the floor with readily available help if required was likely to cause injury, or foreseeably likely to cause injury, to an adult male in full health. Moreover, I find as a fact that he was told to lift with his back straight and his knees bent, he was told to get help with anything that was heavy, and that help was readily available."
"If something is under the control of the defendant and an accident occurs in the circumstances such that it would not have happened unless there had been a want of care by the defendant then a presumption is raised that the defendant has been negligent. The burden is then put on the defendant to explain the accident and to show that there was no want of care on his part; in other words, the facts speak for themselves. The defendant may be able to show a convincing reason why he was not negligent, e.g., the accident was caused by the fault of a third party, in which case the burden of proof is thrown back to the plaintiff to prove his case in the usual manner." (Quotatiion not checked against original)