McGhee v National Coal Board [1972] UKHL 11

A brickworks employee contracted dermatitis after working in hot, dusty conditions. His employers failed to provide shower facilities, which would have materially reduced the risk of disease. The House of Lords held that materially increasing the risk of injury was equivalent to materially contributing to causing the injury, allowing the appeal.

Facts

The appellant was employed by the National Coal Board at their Prestongrange Brickworks. In March 1967, he was transferred from pipe kilns to brick kilns, where conditions were significantly hotter and dustier. He worked in these conditions for several days, cycling home afterwards without adequate washing facilities being available at the workplace. Shower baths had previously been accessible at a nearby colliery until its closure in 1963. The appellant developed dermatitis, an occupational skin disease caused by exposure to heat and abrasive brick dust.

Working Conditions

The brick kiln work involved removing baked bricks from chambers that remained very hot after firing. A fan was used to blow cool air into the chamber, which also stirred up brick dust and coal ashes. Workers sweated profusely in the heat, causing dust particles to adhere to and abrade their softened skin.

Issues

The central legal issue was whether the employer’s admitted breach of duty in failing to provide shower facilities caused or materially contributed to the appellant’s dermatitis, given that medical evidence could not positively state that showers would probably have prevented the disease, only that they would have materially reduced the risk.

Judgment

The House of Lords unanimously allowed the appeal. The Court of Session had held that the appellant failed because he could not prove on the balance of probabilities that the breach of duty caused his injury. The House of Lords disagreed with this approach.

Lord Reid’s Analysis

Lord Reid held that the distinction between materially increasing risk and materially contributing to injury was unsound in practical terms:

“From a broad and practical viewpoint I can see no substantial difference between saying that what the defender did materially increased the risk of injury to the pursuer and saying that what the defender did made a material contribution to his injury.”

Lord Wilberforce’s Analysis

Lord Wilberforce articulated the principle that where a person creates a risk through breach of duty and injury occurs within that risk area, the loss should fall on them unless they prove another cause:

“it is a sound principle that where a person has, by breach of a duty of care, created a risk, and injury occurs within the area of that risk, the loss should be borne by him unless he shows that it had some other cause.”

Lord Salmon’s Analysis

Lord Salmon emphasised that causation is a practical question:

“In the circumstances of the present case it seems to me unrealistic and contrary to ordinary commonsense to hold that the negligence which materially increased the risk of injury did not materially contribute to causing the injury.”

Implications

This decision established an important principle in causation law for industrial disease cases. Where an employer’s breach of duty materially increases the risk of an employee contracting an occupational disease, and the employee does contract that disease, the employer will be liable even if medical science cannot establish a definitive causal chain. The case recognised the practical difficulties of proving causation in complex medical situations and placed the burden of uncertainty on the party who created the risk through their negligence. The decision built upon earlier pneumoconiosis cases such as Wardlaw v Bonnington Castings and Nicholson v Atlas Steel Foundry, extending the principles of material contribution to circumstances where the precise mechanism of disease causation remained unknown.

Verdict: Appeal allowed. The defenders were held liable in damages for the appellant's dermatitis.

Source: McGhee v National Coal Board [1972] UKHL 11