Chicken worker's manual handling appeal rejected

Trussing process not handling a "load" under the regulations

News, 22 May 2007

A factory worker who claimed she suffered wrist injury through handling chickens on a production line has lost the appeal against the rejection of her claim for damages.

Margaret Hughes had brought an action against Grampian Country Food Group Ltd after claiming she developed carpal tunnel syndrome which was aggravated by her work at the defenders' Cambuslang factory.

Last year Lord Menzies in the Court of Session agreed that there was a link between Ms Hughes' work and the worsening of her symptoms (see http://www.journalonline.co.uk/news/1002667.aspx). However he ruled that she had failed to establish her case brought under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, as her work on the trussing line did not involve "transporting or supporting of a load".

On appeal before the First Division, Ms Hughes' counsel argued that for all but a brief part of the trussing operation she was supporting the chicken carcass by hand or by bodily force. However Lord President Hamilton, sitting with Lords Philip and Eassie, said that the wide construction urged "would appear to make virtually every human activity, other than the purely cerebral, one of manual handling" - including, for example, a seamstress working with a needle or a librarian turning the pages of a book.

Comparing the regulations with the EU directive they were intended to implement, Lord Hamilton said that although they gave wider protection in some respects, "That does not detract from 'load' having the intrinsic characteristic of weight in the ordinary sense."

"Accordingly", he continued, "although it may be difficult to define with exactness the scope of the Regulations, in any particular case their applicability or otherwise must be determined as a practical exercise by the use of commonsense."

The court was shown a video recording of the trussing operation, but the Lord President declined to express a view on the use of such evidence "in the absence of focused commentary on it by a witness". The Lord Ordinary had seen the evidence and the court was not persuaded that he had failed to take proper advantage of it or that there was any basis for holding that he had reached a wrong conclusion.

The court's opinion can be read at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2007CSIH32.html .