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A case in Queensland revolved around the question of whether a
man was negligent when he accidentally injured his colleague with a
knife.
A construction worker was walking along a footpath adjacent to a
building site, returning at the end of lunchbreak from his parked
car, when he suddenly felt a shooting pain his hand and realised he
had been stabbed by his coworker's knife.
At the time of the incident, the coworker was on his lunchbreak
on a grassed area immediately adjacent to the site, as there was no
designated eating area. Workers frequently traversed this grassed
area.
The coworker had been crouching down, peeling an orange with a
long, sharp knife that he used on the site to remove and replace
asphalt.
Just as he stood up from his crouched position while still
holding the unsheathed knife, the construction worker walked
past.
Without any intention to do so, the coworker stabbed the
construction worker in his left hand.
The construction worker suffered damage to nerves in two of his
fingers, tendons in one of them and arteries in another. He
developed ongoing symptoms which impaired his ability to
participate in many former activities, and he developed major
depression.
Construction worker sues for negligence
The construction worker commenced proceedings in the Supreme
Court of Queensland against the coworker's employer (they were
employed by different entities).
He claimed damages for personal injury, arguing that the
coworker was negligent and his employer was vicariously liable for
that negligence.
The trial judge dismissed the claim, finding that there had been
no negligence.
The construction worker appealed to the Queensland Court of
Appeal.
On appeal, it was accepted that if the employee was found to be
negligent, then the employer was vicariously liable.
CASE A
The case for the injured construction
worker
CASE B
The case for the employer
My coworker (and by consequence, his employer) must be found to
be negligent, because he breached his duty of care owed to me to
take reasonable care to avoid a foreseeable risk of injury.
The conduct that posed a risk was my coworker's action in
moving from a crouched position to an upright stance while holding
a long, sharp, unsheathed knife.
There was a clearly foreseeable risk that such conduct might
result in a passer-by such as me being struck by the blade of the
knife.
My coworker ought reasonably to have known of this not
insignificant risk. The knife had a long, sharp blade that could
cause serious injury, and he knew that the location where the
incident occurred was frequently traversed by workers.
A reasonable person in my coworker's position would have
taken the simple precaution of looking properly before he rose,
putting the blade away before he rose, or pointing the blade
towards the ground as he rose. He did none of these things.
This was an unfortunate accident, not negligence.
Our employee was engaged in the simple act of using his knife
to peel his lunchtime orange. The risk of injury to a passerby in
these circumstances was not foreseeable, and the risk of a person
coming into contact with the knife in these circumstances was
insignificant.
To say otherwise is to say that our employee was responsible
for any injury which occurred to any person in the vicinity, simply
because he had a knife in his hand, irrespective of the other
person's actions. People use knives in the presence of each
other every day without harm occurring, because normally one person
does not get so close to another person who is using a knife so as
to be injured. Here though, the worker was injured because he moved
very close into our employee's personal space. Conversely,
there is no evidence that as our employee stood up, he moved from
the spot that he had been crouching on.
Given the low probability of an injury occurring from peeling
an orange with a knife, a reasonable person in our employee's
position would not have done any more than he did to avoid the risk
of injury. If anyone should have been keeping a lookout, it was the
injured worker. He was the one who was upright and walking towards
our crouching employee, through a group that was obviously taking
its lunch break, where cutlery would be present.
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