Thursday, Sep 23, 2010
O give a definitive ruling on the extent of householders' duties towards workmen
Dailymail: Polish builder who fell off ladder sues homeowner for not letting him traipse through home in muddy boots to get to roof
The builder blames Mrs Isaacs for the accident because he was prevented from using a safer access route to the roof via a bedroom window after she declared her £4million family home 'out of bounds' to workmen.
Posted by mark @ 10:38 AM (1557 views) Add Comment
18 Comments
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1. Slateblue said...
He knew the access and working space restrictions put on him,so should have come up with a safe method of working
2. Crunchy said...
"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."
- William Shakespeare.
3. drewster said...
Let me rewrite that headline:
"Seriously injured builder is advised by money-grubbing lawyer to sue negligent employer for unsafe working environment"
4. estrader said...
Let this be a warning to the property hogs. When you are too old and frail to fix your leaking roof, and your boiler, and your fence you will be calling the young, who are fit and healthy, to do the work for you. They will charge you what they want and because you are cold and wet you will be forced to pay it or you will remain cold and wet.
5. techieman said...
Armag Decoration - should be in the dock here. Still they havent got any money so lets see what happens. The argument must turn on the contract between the owner and the employer. If it were a contractual right to gain access - easement? then that would be a different matter.
Mind you i doubt it - and if right of easement were refused then the contractor / employee should have insisted on it. Otherwise there is acquiescence. All in all sounds like a pretty weak case to me, but we shall see.
6. mark wadsworth said...
I did that on my law degree, as between an expert roofer and a homeowner, the homeowner bears no liability, provided any danger was inherent in the work undertaken (i.e. getting up on the roof).
It would have been different had the roofer e.g. been allowed to go through the house but had crashed through some mouldy floorboards which had not been pointed out to him and of which the homeowner was, or should have been, aware. Or been bitten by some poisonous pet snakes etc.
The rules are far stricter as between employer and employee. Let's imagine roofing contractor asks an employee (who knows not much about scaffolding) to climb up a scaffolding and the scaffolding collapses - it is the employer's duty to provide a safe working environment and so on. But the employer would not be so liable vis a vis an employee who is an expert in putting up scaffolding and is paid to do this.
This is one of the few areas of law that actually apply commonsense.
7. timmy t said...
Mark, is there not another site you can post this stuff on. I would be the first to admit that your posts re unemployment are relevant (even if they are a bit frequent) to HPC, but can you explain what impact this will have on house prices?
8. alan_540 said...
Illustrative that house prices are about to fall through the floor?
9. symo said...
Ah Mr Wadsworth, but if the builder pointed out that the safer access route was via the house, then the home owner will bear responsibility for insisting on work in an unsafe manner.
My legal training only comes via contract law and H&S, but the owner of the property will bear responsibility for work taking place on their land. It was her responsibilty to provide the safest access route, and that the work would be undertaken in the safest manner. You see this a lot in the world of lifts, in that the property owner is responsible for making the lift service engineers environment safe, and lift shafts tend to be far more inherently dangerous than roofing.
As for the effect on property prices, what has been pointed out is true, anyone younger than baby boomers will soon be charging them £300 to change a light bulb, but hey that means property prices will keep going up.
10. mark said...
timmy if this guy wins then expect household insurance to go through the roof, thus more inflation..
it was posted just out of interest and to put some fun in our boring lives, while we wait for house prices to fall off a ladder which is not a very good one holding up the prices
11. mark wadsworth said...
Symo, the builder was perfectly entitled to refuse the job in that case, or to bump up the price for safe access to the roof. Roofing is inherently dangerous.
12. estrader said...
"anyone younger than baby boomers will soon be charging them £300 to change a light bulb, but hey that means property prices will keep going up."
Let's see...older houses will cost more and more to maintain so their value will go...up!
...I suppose that makes a sense...
13. bidin'matime said...
Despite section 2(3)(b) of the Occupier’s Liability Act, which states “an occupier may expect that a person, in the exercise of his calling, will appreciate and guard against any special risks ordinarily incident to it, so far as the occupier leaves him free to do so”, HSE literature makes it clear that the occupier cannot entirely wash their hands of the matter.
For example, if Mrs Isaacs had reason to believe that the builder was unhappy about climbing the ladder (eg if he had pointed out that the ground was not level, or maybe he told her it was his first week in the job and he was unsure about climbing ladders…), then this transfers some of the responsibility to her. In short, any involvement that she had in the decision puts some onus on her – hence the court’s decision to allow him to appeal to a higher court.
14. mark said...
With hindsight I bet she wished she had beaten him to death with the ladder and buried him in the garden, after all would anyone have missed him?
wonder if he was claiming benefits too?
It says the ladder was not right for the job, being a builder he should have known this and brought the correct ladder
15. Redbullish said...
£4,000,000 for that!
16. sneaker said...
Newspaper Picks Up On Real Issue Shock!!!
17. clockslinger said...
MW @ 6, there was, apparently, a "safer" access route through bedroom window, so, to use your analogy, wouldn't asking to use that route be like asking the householder with hypothetical snake to put snake in box whilst working...before getting bitten when householder refuses?
Symo @ 9, the extent to which an occupier can control the working environment in his premisis for a lift service engineer working in a lift shaft containing lift companies lift and associated lift gear is, I suspect, the subject of just a tiny little bit of legal argument in such cases.
'Course the most contentious and interesting points in the article for the Mail reader are 1) nationality of builder and 2) price of "dream home".
18. Ubear said...
I call BS, the builder has the (H&S) responsibility to use the right tools for the job, for his and others safety, so was obviously negligent. The builder had the option of refusing the work or requesting extra funds to hire the right length ladder, safety harnesses, scaffolding, a cherry picker, lift platform etc., as required.