To this is added the employer’s liability for penalties and to pay compensation for injury due to failure to see that the safety, health and welfare regulations in the Factories Act 1961 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and the regulations under the Acts are carried out.
Finally, by recent legislation the employer is liable for any injury to an employee in consequence of a defect in equipment provided by the employer even though the defect is due to the fault of a third party (e.g. the manufacturer) and could not reasonably have been detected by the employer. “Equipment” includes any plant and machinery, vehicle, aircraft and clothing.
Under these headings an employee is entitled to compensation by a lump sum to cover all loss of earnings, pain and suffering, disability, etc., but if he was negligent himself he may lose all or part of the compensation:
An experienced employee was killed when he fell from a roof on which he was doing an unusually awkward job.
Held: His employers were liable for breach of statutory duty in not supplying him with proper crawling boards as required by the Building (Safety, etc.) Regulations, 1948, and for negligence in not drawing his attention to the regulations or to the necessity for a proper system of work.
But as the workman was partly to blame in not using scaffolding boards which had been supplied, his widow was held entitled only to two-thirds of the full damages.
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