Spencer-Franks v Kellogg Brown & Root Limited &
Others Inner House of the Court of Session, 29 March 2007
Peter Spencer-Franks was employed as a mechanical technician on
the Tartan Alpha Platform in the Scottish sector of the North Sea.
He had to inspect and repair a door closer on the central control
room door on the platform. In order to do so he required to take it
off to work on it. As he was in the process of taking a closer look
the arm of the door closer struck him in the face.
The Inner House of the Court of Session had to determine whether
or not the door closer which Mr Spencer-Franks was working on at
the material time was 'work equipment' within the meaning of
Regulation 2(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment
Regulations 1998. The three judges were unanimous in their opinion
that it was not.
Mr Spencer-Franks had been attempting to prise out the linkage
arm with a screwdriver. The 'work equipment' in this case was the
screwdriver. Even had that by accident struck him in the face he
could not have succeeded unless he could have demonstrated that the
cause of the accident was some deficiency in the screwdriver
itself.
The court followed the English decision in Hammond v
Commissioner of Police (2004) in holding that the Regulations
"do not extend to that which the employee is working on as
distinct from the equipment which he is using to undertake his
work." It would be going too far to suggest that the effect of
the Regulations would cover injuries arising from any defect in
equipment in the workplace whatsoever as it would mean that the
employer of the mechanic who changes a tyre on a car would be
strictly liable if the mechanic were to be injured by a defect in
the car itself and not the equipment supplied by the employer which
he was using to carry out the task.
It may be of interest to note that Lord Marnoch added that:
"There was some discussion in that case, (that is, Hammond)
about the possible importance of such objects having been
"provided" by a third party. I do not, myself, see that
consideration as determinative and I do not think that the
ownership of an object is in any event determinative of who should
be seen as "providing" it to the employee."