Posted By Peter Younger With the removal of civil liability from the MHSWR99 I am reading several versions of the outcome, some say employers can now claim against employees for breach of duty under the 99 management regs, what do people make of this?

Posted By Jane Blunt Can I be pedantic here? The Management Regs 1999, reg 22 say 'Breach of a duty imposed by these regulations shall not confer a right of action in any civil proceedings'. What is about to happen is that this regulation is to be removed, so that both employers and employees will be free to bring actions against one another for breach of statutory duty, citing a duty in the Management Regs. Jane

Posted By Dave Daniel My peerings in the crystal ball suggest to me that not much will change. There has been much political posturing over this, mainly by those not apparently involved in litigation. When risk assessments first came in big-time in 1992 I too thought that particularly in manual handling, they would be widely used to demonstrate negligence by their absence or inadequacy, but this has not happened. There is lots of evidence that judges do not give more than a passing acknowledgement to risk assessments et al in determining liability, even where there is no current civil liability exclusion (manual handling, DSE, COSHH, etc). Liability is determined by the facts, not the opinions of the Risk Assessor, would be the court's view. On this basis it does not seem to matter much whether there is a civil liability exclusion or not. I regard a risk assessment as a place to prime and point the insurance claims investigator on all the things you had done to prevent the injury occurring, rather than a tool to defend a claim of negligence. On other MHSR matters again you would also need to prove a direct causal link between your accident and the breach of MHSR (say no competent person appointed for eg). Again I think this would be hard to demonstrate and judges will be much more interested in the facts surrounding an injury. Whatever else you may think the Judiciary are good at arriving at practical and common-sense views. Of course others may hold different views. Regards, Dave - Safety Consultant - Coventry

Posted By Ken Taylor Am I right in thinking that the only change will be a right to cite a breach of Regulations in civil action and that there always was a potential for civil action on the basis of loss through negligence (ie that it will be the actual acts and omissions that will still be the basis and that breach of Regulations will be one means of supporting the facts)?

Posted By Chris Abbott I must admit we've definitely seen a much greater trend of "no-win-no-fee" actions lately, since I suppose our site is closing, people are - regrettably - taking the time to try and get compensation for, shall we say, dubious claims. I was talking to our claims manager and he explained that the problem is, young solicitors are willing to fight just that little bit harder to win a case they believe "may" succeed, and in some cases, will fight anyway because they are on some form of commission - although I don't know this, I've heard the rules on no-win-no-fee charges and commissions are going to be/have been changed - this came from the Law Society I beleive. The boy who took the school to court for his broken arm, was on a no-win-no-fee bases - and thankfully the High Court Judge had a modicum of common sense, and overturned the action.