Hi,

I hesitate to actually comment on this as it has all the makings of a Friday thread, but if you follow the link there is an underlying legal point which I find interesting;
In an Australian High Court Ruling the Court is quoted as saying "When the circumstances of an injury involve the employee engaging in an activity at the time of the injury, the relevant question is: did the employer induce or encourage the employee to engage in that activity?"
I like that question "did the employer induce or encourage the employee to engage in that activity?" It kind of places a limit on the extent of a duty of care - do we have any similar statements in UK case law. I imagine the neerest is the "off on a frolic of their own"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24739354

Cheers,

Jim

Under the circumstances "a frolic" would sum it up quite nicely.

I think I'd be just too embarrassed to try and claim ..... :O

Perhaps the employer was expected to pay for a better class of hotel. One where the fixtures and fittings come with a weight limit, just in case you want to swing from them.

I wonder if there is a standard and would you have to display the safe working load prominently on the shade.

From the information available about the case, I can't understand why the employee claimed compensation against her employer, i.e. the Australian government or rather its insurer. If she believed that she suffered harm because the hotel bedroom light fitting or part of it was defective or inadequately fixed in place and fell on her when either she or her companion pulled on the light's control cord, surely she should have tried to claim against the hotel company. The company might well have defended against such a claim on various grounds including the possibility that the fitting only came adrift and fell because the cord was pulled with excessive force and/or in an unexpected direction.

The activity in which she and her companion were engaged at the time of the accident was surely irrelevant, and merely rendered the ensuing court hearings of far greater interest to journalists and their readers/viewers in Australia and many other countries than if they'd been doing crosswords or watching TV.

p.s. If the claimant had looked at this forum a week ago, (though the probability of her doing so was quite low), she could have offered a response to the question posed in the "Purple Hotels" thread - provided she worded it in a way which didn't breach any forum rules. However, if she had wanted to respond, her opportunity to do so was time-limited because the thread's title included the words "Friday Thread" and led to it being locked several days later! :-(

Hi All,

Thanks for the reply's, although I was kind of hoping for more on the legal point rather than the specifics of the story the answers were top line and witty....
Maybe I shouldn't have provided the link,
ah well,

Jim

Contributory negligence......