The widow of a utility company worker who died from a blood clot three weeks after being laid up by a ‘sore knee’ has failed to convince a judge that his enforced immobility was the result of an avoidable slipping accident at work.
The widow had sought almost £290,000 in damages from Scottish Water after finding her husband’s body on the floor of the family bathroom. A post mortem report had pinpointed the cause of death as a pulmonary embolism which had developed in his left leg before moving and obstructing the blood flow into his lungs.
His inactivity had stemmed from a wrenched knee he suffered while on an inspection tour of a waste water pumping station. His widow’s legal team claimed that he had slipped on a tricky terrain of mud and wet grass and that the accident had triggered the fatal chain of events. Scottish Water was accused of taking insufficient steps to make it a safe place to work.
However, in dismissing the widow’s claim, the judge found that it had not been proved on the balance of probabilities that her husband slipped at all. Given pre-existing problems with his left knee, it was possible that it had simply ‘given way’ and his employers could not be blamed for that.
The judge said that his impression was that the route taken by the man had led him down a gradient which was ‘gentler than slopes that are negotiated daily without any perceived risk in the countryside, in parks, in gardens and on golf courses’. In the circumstances, there was no hazard which his employers could reasonably have been expected to foresee.