Injured street cleaner wins case against Hull CC in Court of Appeal

Hull City Council could face paying out a significant sum in damages and costs after the Court of Appeal ruled that it had failed to supply suitable gloves to one of its street cleaners.

Steven Threlfall sued his employer after sustaining a serious cut to his left hand in May 2006 while clearing debris from the garden of a council property. He alleged that the injury – an artery and tendon in his left little finger were severed – had been due to Hull’s negligence or breach of statutory duty.

The gloves were standard issue for all of the council’s street cleaners, but the manufacturer described them as being of a simple design for “minimal risks only”.

The claimant lost at both the county court and on appeal to Blake J, partly because of his difficulty in showing exactly how the accident had happened. However, he was granted permission to appeal on an issue of construction of Regulations 4 and 6 of the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.

Giving the lead judgement in the Court of Appeal, Lady Justice Smith said she accepted the submission of the counsel for the claimant that this was “just the kind of accident in which it might well be impossible for the appellant to know exactly how his hand came to be cut”.

The judge said: “In my view, it should have been sufficient that the appellant showed that his hand had been cut while he was doing his job of clearing rubbish and had been wearing the gloves provided. If he were then able to show that the gloves provided were not 'suitable' that should have been enough for the inference of causation to be drawn.”

Lady Justice Smith also ruled that the risk assessment carried out by the council was “manifestly defective” when compared with the requirements laid down by Regulation 6 of the 1992 Act. “That assessment failed to recognise that there was a risk that employees might suffer a laceration of the hand as the result of contact with some sharp object which might well be hidden from view and therefore not avoidable by the taking of ordinary care,” she said.

The judge added that the standard issue gloves supplied by Hull were “plainly not effective” to prevent or adequately control the risk of laceration. Their provision amount to a breach of Regulation 4. Lady Justice Smith also ruled that the claimant had not been contributorily negligent.