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Posted By Andy Holmes
Is anyone able to identify a recent UK ruling where in cases of noise induced hearing damage, the courts established dates after which a reasonable employer should have been aware of relevant risks and taken precautions.
Also, is the 3 year rule from knowledge of cause of action relevant in cases such as this?
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Posted By Jonathan Breeze
Andy,
I know it was asbestos & not noise, but wasn't that the basis of a case against Turner & Newall?
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter Andy The date of knowledge for noise induced hearing loss is 1963 when 'Noise and the Worker' was published. The first successful case was, I think, Berry v Stone Manganese Marine in 1972. I can't find the original citation but there is some information at http://www.bailii.org/cg...se+marine&method=phrase.Paul
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Posted By Adrian Watson
Dear Andy,
A couple of points; As Paul has stated Noise Claims are generally accepted from the date of issue of the Noise and the Worker in 1963. However defendants with specialist knowledge could be liable from an earlier date.
In respect of the 3-year limitation period it starts on the date of the cause of action or the date of knowledge of the person injured if this is later.
Regards Adrian Watson
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Posted By Geoff Burt
How does that work with MoD? They have paid out for armed forces noise induced hearing loss for service people affected as far back as during the last war. Which of course was well before 1963.
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Posted By Adrian Watson
Geoff,
Yes, but those payments are made as part of a war disability pension which does not require any negligence, just injury attributable to military service.
Regards Adrian Watson
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Posted By Geoff Burt
The injury being noise induced hearing loss contracted in the 1940s and only recognised since 1963!
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Posted By Nigel Lusby
Andy,
snipped a bit from a recent paper, hoefully be some use to you.
Regards
Nigel
Kloss reference:
Kloss, D,. 1998. Occupational Health Law. 3rd Ed. London. Blackwell Science
Limited.
The employer must have regard for, scientific knowledge, foreseeability cost and consequence (Barrett & Howells 2000).
In Thompson v. Smiths Ship-repairers (1984), a labourer employed in a ship-repairing yard for forty years where no hearing protection was made available until the 1970’s, sought redress for occupational deafness. The High Court accepted that his employer was negligent but had to fix a material date. The Court concluded that the first official guidance came in 1963 with a report of the Wilson Committee and thereafter a Ministry of Labour pamphlet Noise and the Worker (Kloss 1998). 1963 was thus marked as the dividing line between the inception of a reasonable policy and a failure to be sufficiently alert and active. Whereby the judge held that an employer cannot be expected to be much in advance of general practice in the industry.
However, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal’s view differed from that of the English Judge; in Baxter v. Harland and Wolff (1990) it held that even before 1963 there was sufficient medical, scientific and legal knowledge to have warned them of the risk. Damages were awarded from 1954, the cut-off date fixed by the Limitation Acts (Arnold v. CEGB 1988). In a similar case it was held that British Rail should have provided ear defenders by 1955, (Kellet v. BR Engineering, 1984). Subsequently BR received over 2000 claims for industrial deafness (Kloss 1998).
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