Explain How The Employer Could Sue Fred For Breaching The Duty Of Care

Question 1:

The WHS legislation provides a clause that the employer needs to do everything reasonably practical to ensure that safety of workers. The concept of reasonably practical requires employers to consider factors such as the severity of the risk, knowledge of the risk, ease of / cost of removing / mitigating the hazard and the information that the employer ought to have known about the risk.

In this case scenario, the severity of the risk is that employees can get injured if not trained properly, or if employees have been trained but fail to follow safety procedures. Another risk is that the machine may start to malfunction due to wear and tear and regular maintenance should be carried out to prevent accidents. The employer would
Thus, breaching the employer’s duty to ensure safety of employees. Thus, the employer is liable for prosecution.

Question 2:

The employer could sue Fred for breaching the duty of care. Fred had breached safety procedures despite being warned about finger damage and that there were safety guards, Perspex / plastic shields with two releasable catches, to prevent these injuries. Breaching the safety procedures would have costed the company monetarily due to having to legally compensate for medical care for the injury, rehabilitation, and compensation for loss of income due to inability to work.

Question 3:

Fred has breached the duty of
fingers getting caught in the machine, suffered by a worker. He can also claim for compensable injury as the physical injury was an impairment of a physical body part of sudden development. He is applicable for the compensation as the injury did arise in the course of employment as it the employment contributed to the disability. The form of compensation that Fred can receive is loss of weekly wages that he could not earn due to injury and rehabilitation period. Additionally, the compensation can also pay for medical and rehabilitation