Sal Paradise wrote:Excellent post - perhaps the OP and Mintball should have read this before jumping on the bandwagon of propaganda and miss direction.
On the contrary, a misguided post, all the more so by praing in aid the postman case which in fact, and ironically, provides you with a salutary lesson.
In the postman on a bike case, the employee was injured when a front brake caliper broke. According to the case report, the Post Office had a policy of replacing bicycles at 10 years, but didn't treat it as a rule and as they thought this bicycle had a few years serviceable life left, they didn't pension it off. The bicycle was in its 14th year.
The brake probably broke due to metal fatigue. After 14 years of daily use, it is not a shock. However without strict liability, the PO would have had plenty of potential for a "get ou" by arguing that they did check the bike, that it seemed OK, that they couldn't have detected the metal fatigue, that bikes are expensive, that they acted reasonably, why throw away what seems to eb a perfectly serviceable machine, etc etc.
Whereas in fact if they had followed their own policy the postman never would have been injured. Given that he was, and given that the specific cause was a metal failure on a 14 year old bike, provided by his employer, why should he have to jump through hoops and combat the inevitable defences? They took the risk of using ageing equipment and so they, and not their innocent employee, are the obvious party that should pay the price.
The following excerpt is taken from the case report - with
my emphasis:
Quote: It is quite true that the sub-section, so read, imposes a heavy burden upon employers, but the object of this group of sections is to protect the workman. I think the sub-section must have been so worded in order to relieve the injured workman from the burden of proving that there was some particular step which the employers could have taken and did not take. This would often be a difficult matter, more especially if the cause of the failure of the mechanism to operate could not be ascertained. The statute renders the task of the injured workman easier by saying, "You need only prove that the mechanism failed to work efficiently and that this failure caused the accident.""
The law in this case worked exactly as I think it should. The employee was injured due to metal failure on work equipment provided for his use by his employer. That was, and clearly should be, enough. Change the law and you plainly open the door to the postman not being compensated at all. And before you go off on another of your rants, perhaps you should bear in mind that even with strict liability in place, the employer was defending this claim and, had it not been for strict liability, his employer may well have escaped paying him compensation, and that, to me, would have been the clearest of injustices.
