An office manager who brought a claim against her employers for work-related stress has had her case dismissed as she failed to pass the "foreseeability" hurdle. The case - Lynn Jarrett v Aegis Security Enclosures Limited - is significant for being the first to involve an ordinary office environment.
According to Patricia Baxter, occupational disease specialist and insurance partner at Beachcroft Wansbroughs, insurers and employers should be reassured that the courts are continuing to adhere to the principles already established by current case law on the key issue of foreseeability. "To succeed, claimants must clearly demonstrate that the risk of their suffering work-related psychiatric injury was reasonably foreseeable by the employer," she explained. In this case, although Jarrett was clearly over-worked, the judge found no signs that she could not cope.
