Personal injury news

University not liable to lecturer who claimed workload triggered breakdown ending his career

A former Staffordshire University Lecturer who claimed his punishing workload triggered a mental breakdown and ended his career was today stripped of his right to compensation by Appeal Court judges.

In a vital test case, top judges ruled the university authorities could not reasonably have been expected to foresee the devastating consequences of the workload which plunged 50-year-old Peter Best into the depths of depression.

Mr Best's was one of a number of "work stress" cases considered together by the Appeal Court in London and was considered of such importance that the nation's pre-eminent civil judge - the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips - presided.

The ruling means Mr Best, of Great Haywood, Stafford - who had hoped for tens of thousands of pounds in damages from the university after a County Court judge ruled in his favour - will now go without a penny.

Lord Justice Scott Baker - sitting with Lord Phillips and Lord Justice Tuckey - said Mr Best's duties included preparing lecture timetables in the computer sciences department as well as his own lecturing and tutoring of students.

In February 1998 he suffered a breakdown at work. His GP diagnosed anxiety and prescribed anti-depressants and he was off work for six months. He managed to return to work between August 1998 and January but, thereafter, apart from a few days, did not work the university again. He retired on ill health grounds, aged 46, in September 2000.

Mr Best accused the university of negligence in giving him a workload which could not be completed in normal working hours so that he had to toil late into the night and at weekends.

Although he complained, he argued the university's "only response" was to give him a computer for use at his home. Over the years, he alleged he developed headaches, chest pains and indigestion. He was prescribed medication by his doctor in 1991-92, although the final breakdown did not come until February 1998.

HIs lawyers argued it "should have been plain to the university" that Mr Best was "vulnerable to anxiety, stress and kindred conditions" and that, as a result of the "excessive burden" of his job, he was "placed under an accumulation of real and increasingly unreasonable work pressures".

Mr Record Evans upheld his claim against the university at Telford County Court in September last year - but his ruling was today reversed by the Appeal Court judges.

Lord Justice Scott Baker said the university provided a "counselling service" to staff but Mr Best did not take advantage of that. The university put forward the "obvious point" that "if Mr Best did not recognise that he needed counselling, how could his employers be in a better position?"

Although that was "not fatal" to Mr Best's damages claim, the judge said it was relevant to the issue of whether the university could reasonably have foreseen his breakdown.

The judge observed: "There was no expert evidence that more administrative help would have made any difference to the course of the breakdown Mr Best suffered."

And, allowing the university's appeal, he concluded: "The Recorder should have dismissed Mr Best's claim on the ground that his health breakdown in February 1998 was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the conditions under which the university required him to work."