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Occupiers’ liability - warning |
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What do you think would be the outcome of this case: a homeowner is carrying out substantial renovation works, using a contractor. A temporary safety bannister is erected by the contractors, but is removed for a day to enable them to fit the new bannisters. Other contractors then arrive on site (to work on the alarm system, but they arrive on a day when they are not expected). Eventually the homeowner agrees to let them in and warns them that the staircase is unguarded. What happens next is that one of the alarm contractors falls from the stairs, injuring himself. Is the occupier liable – even though he warned about the lack of stair railings?
The CA decided the householder was liable (but with 25% contrib). In the CA’s view this decision was a natural consequence of s2(4) OLA 1957:
‘Where damage is caused to a visitor by a danger of which he had been warned by the occupier, the warning is not to be treated without more as absolving the occupier from liability, unless in all the circumstances it was enough to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe.’
The bottom line here was that ‘warning’ was not sufficient ‘to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe’.
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March 2009 |
