Judges reject claim council breached duty of care to ill man waiting to be rehoused

A London borough did not owe a duty of care to man who died of a severe medical condition while waiting to be rehoused, the Court of Appeal has said.

The case of Darby v Richmond on Thames London Borough Council [2017] EWCA Civ 252 was brought by the administrator of the estate of the late Lee Rabbetts against the London Borough of Richmond on Thames.

Mr Rabbetts suffered from acute myeloid leukaemia and underwent a bone marrow transplant, immunosuppressant treatment and chemotherapy.

On leaving hospital he went to live in his mother’s house, rented from Richmond, where his sister and her baby also lived.

The sister and baby both developed infections which the court heard Mr Rabbetts was assume to have caught, leading to his death a few weeks later.

Lady Justice Thirlwall said she had not heard “any coherent explanation of how the common law duty of care could be said to arise”, in this case, in which it was effectively argued that since the council knew of Mr Rabbetts' condition it was under a duty at common law to award him the correct number of points and so provide him with housing in which he would be safe from infection.

There were only very limited circumstances in which a public authority acting under statute would be held to owe a common law duty of care, the judge said, and alternative remedies under the Housing Act 1996 had existed.

The judge concluded: “I can identify no arguable error in the [original] judge’s decision. On the contrary it is impeccably reasoned.”

Lady Justice Thirlwall went on: “I am quite sure that there is no real prospect of a successful appeal. The law is settled and there is no prospect of establishing that there was a duty of care at common law owed in this case.”

Mark Smulian