Hello all,

I wanted your views on if this incident is reportable or not?

An employee burnt their arm on an oven and a few days later developed sepsis and has been in hospital for 7+ days with the infection. Would you consider this to be reportable as it is a seven day injury or not as it could be argued it was poor management of the wound?

Many thanks

Ok, in law there exists something called the “eggshell rule” which basically means that if an injury causes much more serious damage than you might expect, for example if you hit someone and they have a particularly thin skull and suffer serious injury or even death, you have full liability in criminal  and civil law for the consequences of that act, even though you were unaware of the possible outcome of your illegal act.  So, if someone suffers what initially looked like a minor injury which then gets worse the defendant is liable for the final outcome.

But as we keep saying RIDDOR  is not about liability or culpability; it’s about capturing certain reportable incidents. Minor burns are not one of the things they want to capture.  The HSE says that:  “Accidents must be reported where they result in an employee or self-employed person being away from work, or unable to perform their normal work duties, for more than seven consecutive days as the result of their injury.” So I would suggest that what the HSE wants to know about is injuries not consequences.  Of course, I could be wrong and the HSE  might really be interested this week but I don’t think they will be.

Edited by user 03 March 2023 10:34:28(UTC)  | Reason: missing w rds

Yes, as you would expect, the law has a latin phrase--novus actus interveniens-new act intervening, of course 

Important as pointed out by Peter and Andrew above.

[Latin: a new intervening act (or cause)]

An act or event that breaks the causal connection between a wrong or crime committed by the defendant and subsequent happenings and therefore relieves the defendant from responsibility for these happenings. In tort the chain of causation may be broken by the claimant (McKew v Holland [1969] 3 A11 ER 1621 (HL), natural events (Carslogie Steamship Co Ltd v Royal Norwegian Government [1952] AC 292 (HL), or a third party (Knightley v Johns [1982] 1 WLR 349 (CA).

Plus Robinson v Post Office 1974