Gardiner v Motherwell Machinery and Scrap Co Ltd, 1962 SLT 2
Citation: Gardiner v Motherwell Machinery and Scrap Co Ltd, 1962 SLT 2
Rule of thumb 1: If you were not given protective equipment in the workplace & develop a disease or injury not at the time, but later, how do you prove it was the workplace that caused this? There is a presumption that this was how the injury or disease was caused – the burden of proof lies on the defence to show that it was caused by other lifestyle factors or other circumstances.
Rule of thumb 2: What does cause & effect mean legally? It means that the Court must use common sense to presume the most obvious cause of something to be what actually caused it.
Judgment:
Where a precaution against a certain disease or injury is not taken in a workplace, and a person from this workplace then picks up this disease or injury, there is a presumption that this is where they got the disease or injury from, ‘Where a man who has not previously suffered from a disease contracts that disease after being subject to conditions likely to cause it, and where he shows that it starts in a way typical of disease caused by such conditions, he establishes a prima facie presumption that his disease was caused by such conditions’, Lord Reid
Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.