Injury at Work in UK Law

The proper approach to justification in cases involving discrimination in state benefits is to be found in the Grand Chamber's decision in Stec v United Kingdom (2006) 43 EHRR 1017. The benefits in question were additional benefits for people who had to stop work because of injury at work or occupational disease. They were entitled to an earnings related benefit known as reduced earnings allowance (REA).

It seems clear from Stec, however, that the normally strict test for justification of sex discrimination in the enjoyment of the Convention rights gives way to the "manifestly without reasonable foundation" test in the context of state benefits. The same principles were applied to the sex discrimination involved in denying widow's pensions to men in Runkee v United Kingdom [2007] 2 FCR 178, para 36.

It has been recognised for some time that a contract of employment carries with it certain rights and obligations which reflect the fact that the parties' relationship has personal and social as well as economic dimensions.

Prima facie, his employer, or the person by whose undertaking he was liable to be affected, has failed to ensure his health and safety. This is likely to require more by way of evidence than simply an assertion that that state of affairs existed. Even where an injury has occurred it may not be enough for the prosecutor simply to assert that the injury demonstrates that there was a risk.

Toulson LJ has gone through the sequence of the communications between the parties, but I attach particular importance to the following documents. On 19 March 2003 there was the letter required by the protocol, setting out the claim of the claimant and referring to the accident to the claimant's hand.

But what it does is acknowledge that a succession of consequences which in fact and in logic is infinite will be halted by the law when it becomes unfair to let it continue. In relation to tortious liability for personal injury, this point is reached when (though not only when) the claimant suffers a further injury which, while it would not have happened without the initial injury, has been in substance brought about by the claimant and not the tortfeasor.