Posted By Jay Joshi It would have been great if there was an article in the SHP from solicitors specialising in workplace civil law compensation claims and injunctions as there has been OTT media coverage on this one. I have included some information I received from solicitors dealing in workplace civil law compensation claims and injunctions below:- The removal of civil liability exclusion is not expected to have any significant effect on the number and quantum of civil claims, including injunctions. This has been perceived as primarily enabling employees to claim compensation from employers where they can prove that a breach of the regulations has led to them suffering personal injury. Civil claims have to comply with civil procedure rules that prescribe the proof and documents that have to be provided by the defendant in the form of “pre-action protocols”. The pre-action protocols had included documents to be produced to comply with requirements of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, i.e. Pre and post accident Risk Assessments, Accident Investigation Report, Health Surveillance Records in appropriate cases, Information provided to employees under Documents relating to the employees health and safety training. Employers can now potentially sue employees for breach of Employee’s duty (Regulation 14), but in practice this is normally not done as employers have vicarious liability. Secondly, employees are not required to indemnify themselves by means of insurance cover. This means that there will be negligible scope of recovering monetary compensation and costs involved with the claim and solicitors will normally advise employers against it. Injunctions requiring employers to comply with the regulations can be sought from civil courts, though as they are considered an extremely draconian measure they are only granted in exceptional circumstances where an immediate remedy is required. The likelihood of these amendments being used for getting injunctions in this way is extremely slim, simply because there are other options available, primarily, the involvement of the HSE/local authorities and their ability to serve either an improvement or prohibition notice. Why get involved in complicated and costly proceedings you, when, if the breach is so clear and so fundamental to safety, you could simply contact the regulator and bring it to their attention for action to be taken? These amendments are not expected to give rise to injunctions nor an increase in the amount of claims being brought against employers. If an employee has suffered an injury as a result of failures on the part of their employee, they do not need to cite a breach of the regulations in order to bring a successful claim. All employers owe their employees a “duty of care” and that would be sufficient