Dechert: A door is not equipment for solicitors’ business, court rules
A judge has rejected a potential seven-figure personal injury claim from a solicitor who sustained “a concussive head injury” from a loose door handle at her firm’s offices.
According to His Honour Judge Berkley, Simish Chuhan, then an associate in the London office of US firm Dechert, was said to have been unable to work as a solicitor since shortly after the accident six years ago. She is now 36.
Her LinkedIn profile says she qualified at the firm in 2017 and worked on white collar crime and securities litigation.
The accident happened when the top of a door handle on a fire door “became detached as she pulled it”. The door was at the exit of an in-house café at Dechert’s previous offices on Victoria Street in London.
HHJ Berkley went on: “The claim has significant potential value. The provisional preliminary schedule quantifying the ‘but for’ past and future earning capacities suggests a seven-figure loss”.
The claim was brought under the Employer’s Liability (Defective Equipment) Act 1969, rather than as common law negligence.
HHJ Berkley, sitting at Bristol County Court, said Ms Chuhan argued that the door handle was “defective for multiple reasons” including that the bolt securing the handle was too short and the bolt thread was damaged.
The law firm denied that the 1969 Act applied, on the basis that “a door of this nature cannot be ‘equipment’ for the purposes of the Act”.
Counsel for Ms Chuhan argued that “the door was clearly an article or chattel that was provided by the employer in the course of its business and used by the claimant as an employee, and it was therefore covered by the 1969 Act”.
HHJ Berkley said: “There is nothing unusual about the door here, in the context of an office space. It is, of course, a fire door, but that is probably due to a requirement of either the workplace regulations or some other fire regulations.
“It is a simple door used for separating one room from another. Doors are generally considered part of the building or premises.”
The judge said there were “a few authorities” dealing with the meaning of equipment under the 1969 Act, but they all dealt with “very different circumstances” from those in this case.
“There are intrinsic difficulties with describing a plain and ordinary door used in an office building as ‘equipment’. It is not used in the course of a solicitor’s employment save as part of the building in which that solicitor is employed.
“Of course, the door is part of the building from which the defendant carries on its business, but it cannot really be said that the door is somehow part of the process of providing legal advice.”
The judge went on: “I cannot escape from the fact that the 1969 Act used the words that it did. The definition could easily have included reference to parts of buildings or even doors, but it did not.
“Parliament included separate provision for doors, not in the Equipment Regulations but in the Workplace Regulations.
“Taking the meaning of the word ‘equipment’ in its widest sense, it is in my judgment a step too far to strain the interpretation of the words ‘equipment used for the purposes of’ a solicitor’s business to include an ordinary door in a building.”
HHJ Berkley said he could not “conclude that the door or its handle can be regarded as equipment for the purposes of the 1969 Act” and it followed that the claim must be dismissed.
Leave a Comment