Alexis v Newham London Borough Council [2009] EWHC 1323 (QB)
Alexis v Newham London Borough Council [2009] EWHC 1323 (QB)
Alexis v Newham London Borough Council [2009] EWHC 1323 (QB)
Queen's Bench Division Roger Ter Haar QC J
Arun Katyar appeared for the London Borough of Newham.
15 June 2009
Facts
Ms Alexis alleged that her employer, the London Borough of Newham, had been negligent and failed in its duty of care when she drank from a water bottle which a pupil had laced with board cleaning fluid. The student had used a key she had been entrusted with a key by another teacher at the school in to gain access to her classroom in order to contaminate the drink.
Ms Alexis also claimed that her chances of promotion to the position of head teacher or deputy head had been ruined by the incident. She was seeking £700,000 in compensation.
Held
The Judge accepted said that it was reasonably foreseeable that unsupervised pupils may get up to mischief and that consequently there would be a risk of injury to staff and thus an educational authority owed a duty of care to its teachers to ensure reasonable precautions were in place to prevent or minimize risk of injury as a result of mischievous or malicious behavior on the part of students.
However the Judge held that there was no breach of this duty. He found that it would be absurd to suggest that teachers should not have the discretion to ask pupils to pop along the corridor to get something from another classroom and that in the circumstances the claimant’s colleague had not been negligent in handing over classroom keys to a pupil whose reliability she had no reason to doubt, and nor had she been negligent in allowing the pupil to enter the claimant’s classroom unsupervised.
The Judge went on to dismiss Ms Alexis’ claim that she would have remained in secondary school teaching but for the incident and that the incident had a detrimental effect on her future promotion prospects by casting doubt on her long term commitment to a career in the state secondary system. However the Judge accepted that had there been a breach of duty, a Smith v Manchester award of £25,000 would have been appropriate, as the Claimant could not now realistically return to employment in a secondary school.
Comment
This litigation has attracted much press interest and has considerable importance for education authorities. This case firmly establishes the principle that education authorities may be held liable for the consequences of the acts of unsupervised pupils who misbehave. As this duty is now well established educational authorities should be alert to it and would be wise to reexamine their established practices and policies covering such circumstances in light of this judgment, including a careful consideration of how they are to ‘ensure reasonable precautions are in place to prevent or minimize risk of injury’.