Personal injury law

Novus actus interveniens and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1992

Horton v Taplin Contracts Ltd, CA (Lords Justice Mantell and Rix and Mr Justice Bodey): 8 November 2002

This case involved an examination of the application of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1992 (PUWER) and whether the doctrine of novus actus interveniens can defeat a statutory breach.

The claimant was a carpenter working on a platform in Walsall, removing a suspended ceiling.

The platform had no stabilisers and insufficient guard rails thereby breaching regulation 5 in terms of its suitability for the task in hand.

A colleague, 'in a rage of temper' pushed the scaffold and it toppled over, causing the claimant to suffer serious injury.

The Court of Appeal rejected the application of both the PUWER and regulation 5(2) of the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1996 as each, in the court's view, necessitated a reasonably foreseeable hazard in assessing compliance with the regulations.

In this instance, the act of the colleague was independent, unlawful and deliberate and not foreseeable.

But what if a fork lift truck had accidentally collided with the platform? The same result may have followed.

Surely, there was a foreseeable risk that a collision with the platform could result in such an accident irrespective of the particular actions of the colleague? For the court to say that the platform 'only became unsafe while it was static because someone unexpectedly came along and purposely tipped it up' cannot be right.

The platform was unstable, which is evident from what happened when the colleague pushed it.

There was a risk of it moving, causing injury to the claimant, from so many different causes.

The suspicion is that the claimant may have had more success if he had produced evidence to show that the provision of stabilisers would have prevented the platform from toppling when the colleague pushed it.

In terms of the novus actus, the court held that 'an unforseeable, unreasonable, deliberate, violent act is a paradigm example of a new intervening cause'.

In the circumstances, even if there had been a finding of a breach of statutory duty, the actions of the colleague would have broken the chain of causation.

Their Lordships could find 'no logical reason' why the concept of the new intervening act should not be applicable to a breach of statutory duty.

One suspects that the defendants were fortunate in this instance, in that having failed to provide a 'suitable' platform within the provisions of the Work Equipment Regulations, they were lucky that the first collision with the platform resulted from the act of a work colleague rather than from an accident.

By Simon Allen, Russell, Jones & Walker, Sheffield