Karen O’Sullivan provides an update on cases involving breach of duty & non-tortious causes
Claims for personal injury arising from stress at work are difficult and complex, often with minute consideration of specific facts as to what the employer did or didn’t do. One complexity is the common scenario where other factors in the claimant’s life have contributed to the breakdown in mental health.
This issue was recently visited in the Court of Appeal case of Brown v London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames [2012] All ER (D) 278 (Nov), although the court failed to produce definitive guidance as to how to treat the interaction between the employer’s breach of duty and non-tortious causes (in Mr Brown’s case, his marriage breakdown).
Unfortunately we have two separate dicta on the issue which are explicitly different, both from the Court of Appeal, and both obiter. In Hatton v Sunderland [2002] 2 All ER 1, Hale LJ suggested that the court should consider first whether the employer’s breach of duty was such that absent the breach,
