Catherwood LibraryILR School

Despite enormous legal hurdles, and a mixture of outrage and incredulity on the part of employers, an increasing number of stress claims are being decided in favor of British workers, with the awards falling in the quarter-million dollar range. Although personal injury law in Britain does not contain language limiting its application to either physical or mental harm, issues of causation and the forseeability of the negative outcome by the employer have made it almost impossible for employees to win any but the most outrageous of psychiatric injury cases. While an employee pursuing such a case would bear the burden of proving that their employer ignored a diagnosable mental condition and engaged in actions likely to worsen that condition, employers cannot use as a defense the way a normal employee would respond---their actions must be considered within the context of an employee's previously existing mental state.