When assuming that everyone knows about a trip hazard won’t be a defence when someone actually trips
What happened?
A lady had worked at the council for twenty years and knew the surrounding area well.
There was a point outside the offices where a tarmac path intersected at a ninety-degree angle with a slabbed path. People were in the habit of taking a shortcut across the angle of the two paths. The grass had been worn away where people walked and a depression made next to the path which amounted to a tripping hazard.
The lady tripped at this point and fractured her wrist.
The council argued that there had never been any previous accidents there. On the afternoon of the accident, the council had laid slabs across the worn grass, making good the trip.
The lady made a claim against the council.
Legal Outcome
The Judge found that the council knew of the worn grass, but had done nothing and that this made them liable under the Occupiers Liability Act. The path was heavily used and the shortcut obvious. The Council had done nothing but assume that the risk was minimal to people looking carefully on the ground before they walked.
The Court could not take any account the absence of previous accidents. The more people walked on the path, the greater the hazard became with erosion and it was inevitable that someone would trip eventually.
The judge further found that the claimant had been in a hurry and had not been as careful as she should have done and therefore made a finding of 50% contributory negligence.
What can we learn from what happened?
This is a very old case (1951), but the issues are as relevant and applicable now as they were then. People tripping over is not something that has stopped happening, or will ever stop happening.
There are a few points of interest here.
Firstly, the trip hazard was, over time, becoming more hazardous and the ground wore away, so the duty to deal with it increased accordingly.
Secondly, the absence of previous accidents is often used as a defence, but as the judge said, it was foreseeable that someone would trip eventually (and with no evidence to support this, I don’t believe nobody had tripped in all those years – nothing found its way into an accident book is more likely).
Thirdly, the council relied on people ‘taking care’ of themselves – this can be a plausible control sometimes in that it is reasonable to expect people, especially working adults, to take a degree of care, and this was taken into account when the judge made a finding of 50% contributory negligence (i.e. she was as much to blame as the council).
Source of Information
NCRQ