Employers owe their staff a personal, non-delegable duty to take reasonable care for their safety. When that duty is breached and a worker is injured, the employer is directly liable in negligence — quite separately from being held responsible for the wrongs of others. As a solicitor, you'll meet these claims constantly: a defective machine, an unsafe system of work, an employee buckling under stress, or exposure to disease. Knowing how the duty operates lets you advise both injured workers and employers with confidence.
Here's how this lesson is built up:
- Nature of Primary Liability and the Duty of Care — what primary liability is, how it differs from vicarious liability, and the four core aspects of the duty.
- Breach of Duty — the standard of the reasonable employer and the factors that decide whether it has been breached.
- The Four Aspects of the Duty — what a safe place, equipment, system of work, and competent colleagues each demand in practice.
- Psychiatric Injury from Work Stress — when stress-related harm is foreseeable and what the employer must do about it.
- Causation and Remoteness — proving the breach caused the harm, including disease cases and the egg-shell skull rule.
- Defences — contributory negligence, volenti, and why liability can't simply be contracted away.