Should employers worry? ‐ Workplace stress claims following the John Walker decision
| Pages | 468-487 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480110394339 |
| Published date | 01 August 2001 |
| Date | 01 August 2001 |
| Author | Jill Earnshaw,Lynne Morrison |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
30,4
468
Personnel Review,
Vol. 30 No. 4, 2001, pp. 468-487.
#MCB University Press, 0048-3486
Received September
1999
Revised March 2000
Accepted March 2000
Should employers worry?
Workplace stress claims following
the John Walker decision
Jill Earnshaw
Manchester School of Management, UMIST,
Manchester, UK, and
Lynne Morrison
Harrison, Leitch and Logan Solicitors, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Keywords Stress, Litigation, Employers
Abstract In 1995 a social worker employed by Northumberland County Council won a
landmark victory in the High Court by suing his employer in respect of a stress-related illness
brought about by work overload. Media coverage at the time predicted the opening of the
floodgates to large numbers of such legal actions, but no such legal judgments have followed.
Attempts to ascertain the reason, based on a survey and follow-up interviews of personal injury
solicitors. Finds that employees faced considerable barriers to bringing personal injury claims
based on psychiatric harm. However, the research also reveals that being involved in this type of
litigation was a problem for employers and that some claims have been settled out of court.
Concludes that regardless of legal actions, there are good reasons why employers should take
seriously the issue of workplace stress.
Introduction
``Stress'' was one of the most common ``buzzwords'' of the last decade. To some,
it is a trendy modern condition which simply requires those claiming to suffer
from it to ``pull themselves together''; for others it has been a traumatic
experience which has poisoned their working environment and ruined their
career prospects forever. Whatever their personal views, however, employers
have been increasingly unable to ignore the evidence linking stress-related
illnesses with specific aspects of the workplace, and in 1995 they were alerted
sharply to the legal implications of stress by an historic High Court case
involving John Walker, a social worker employed by Northumberland County
Council.
The decision of the High Court made legal history because it was the first
time an employer had been found liable for negligently causing an employee's
nervous breakdown brought on by work overload over a period of time, and it
was followed by a wave of media speculation that the floodgates would be
opened to a multiplicity of legal actions against employers[1]. However,
contrary to the predictions of the majority of commentators, there have been no
successful personal injury actions concerning workplace stress since that time.
Admittedly, there have been a handful of reports of out-of-court settlements: in
1996 a teacher was awarded £82,500 by Coventry City Council following an
assault on her by a pupil (New Law Practitioner, 1996) and in 1998 the press
reported payouts of £100,000 each to a policeman who was demoted following
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Should
employers
worry?
469
a series of poor staff appraisals and a deputy headteacher who suffered two
nervous breakdowns as a result of bullying in the workplace (The Daily
Telegraph, 1998). The same year, the widow of a male nurse who committed
suicide after being forced to take on managerial tasks with which he could not
cope, agreed to a settlement of £25,000 (Health Law, 1998). More recently,
Birmingham County Court awarded £67,400 to a City Council worker when her
employers admitted liability for her forced medical retirement caused by their
failure to provide her with managerial support on her promotion (Johnstone,
1999). Despite press coverage of such payouts, the lack of reported legal
decisions may well have given employers the impression that the John Walker
case was very much a one-off and that scare stories predicting it would cost
them dearly unless they took prompt and effective action to deal with stress at
work, could largely be ignored.
Whilst there is no doubt that the John Walker judgment constituted a legal
landmark, the full implications for employers of the legal issues it raised have
not, as yet, been fully clarified. This article looks briefly at the links between
psychological ill-health and the workplace before exploring the legal issues
involved in ``stress'' claims and questioning the extent to which either they, or
more practical considerations, might create a barrier to employees bringing
further successful legal actions. It then reports the findings of a survey and
follow-up interviews of personal injury solicitors carried out in 1998 which
sought answers to such questions. Because only a poor response rate to the
questionnaires was obtained, the results were not used to produce statistical
data. They were nevertheless useful in identifying overall trends which were
then investigated in more detail in the interviews. In this way, the research
explored the range of claims in respect of which employees were seeking legal
advice and highlighted the factors which might impede cases proceeding to
trial. However, it also demonstrated that whilst litigating such claims caused
difficulties for employees, they could be equally problematic for employers. In
addition to presenting the findings of the study, the article also reports on a
recent case which opens the door to the more convenient and less costly
employment tribunal route for certain types of claim. It concludes that the issue
of workplace stress should be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, including
the fact that it may well become the subject of a Health and Safety Executive
(HSE) Approved Code of Practice.
Stress and the workplace
A large number of workplace stressors of varying degrees of gravity have been
identified over the years, but although research has shown that many of these
factors will have negative outcomes at work, not all are likely to cause a
psychiatric illness sufficient to found a personal injury claim. Thus, for
example, stress arising from unclear goals and/or objectives has been shown to
lead to job dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence, feelings of futility,
depression, low motivation to work, increased blood pressure and pulse rate,
and intention to leave the job (Kahn et al., 1964). Yet although there is a strong
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