Stress, operational mistakes and the law

To the lawyer interested in safety, mistakes at the workplace are associated with accidents involving personal injury: mistakes may result in other forms of crises within the organisation, such as forgetting to charge for an expensive consignment of goods, but such mistakes are beyond this remit. Stress may lead to plant and equipment failure, but, this is not considered though it is noteworthy that plant failure stresses people employed to use it. A stressed worker may make a mistake which endangers others either at the workplace or members of the public. A worker may suffer ill-health as a result of continual stress over a period of time or as the consequence of a single traumatic experience (PTSD). This paper is concerned with worker stress which actually causes, or has the potential to cause dangerous mistakes: dangerous in the sense that they put other persons, either fellow workers or members of the public, at risk of suffering personal injury