Grumpy Old Chook

It was Dickens’ character, Mr Bumble, in Oliver Twist, who first declared the law to be “a ass.” In his case, his diatribe against the law was a response to its supposition that a man had control over his wife’s actions.

The law, mercifully, no longer makes such suppositions about women; nonetheless, it is every bit as asinine as it ever was, and particularly so in relation to compensation payouts.

A television current affairs program recently carried the story of a woman who had been working from home, “telecommuting” to her job. She came downstairs wearing only socks, and slipped and hurt herself. Then, still wearing only socks, she went to answer the front door, and again slipped and hurt herself.

Some silver-tongued sleazeball lawyer managed to convince a court that (1) her home was a workplace and therefore the falls were “workplace accidents” (2) her employer had a duty of care in relation to her in that workplace. She was awarded some massive payout.

Excuse me! She was the idiot who was too lazy to put on some shoes. She was the even bigger idiot who, having slipped once in her socked feet, still didn’t bother to put on shoes, and hence slipped again.

Again, how can an employer’s “duty of care” extend to a domain that is solely under the control of the employee? Would the employer have been allowed to go in and do a “safety audit” of her home to ensure that it was up to scratch?

If a tradesman had been in her home and had slipped and been injured, she would have been held responsible. Why should she not be held responsible when she slips in her own home, and through her own fault?

If her home is her workplace, then I just hope her employer finds some way to sue her for not maintaining her workplace to correct safety standards!

Why does it matter? After all, some people would say, the settlement undoubtedly came out of insurance, not out of her employer’s pocket. But that’s just the point. Insurers are not charities, they – like every other business – are in the game to make a profit. Every shonky payout like this means that insurance premiums go up for all of us.

In this case, there is also another aspect to consider. For many people, particularly those with disabilities or mums with young kids, working at home and “telecommuting” is a perfect solution. But if employers are going to be held responsible for what goes on in their employees’ own homes, they are going to be less and less willing to offer this option.

Of course, this is far from the only example of ridiculous compensation payouts. I remember reading, quite a few years ago, of a bloke in the US who bought a Winnebago. The dealer told him that it was an automatic and had cruise control. The nitwit buyer took that to mean that the car would drive itself, so in the middle of tootling down a busy freeway, he got up from the driver’s seat and went in back to make himself a cup of coffee. Of course, the inevitable happened and the Winny crashed. The nitwit sued the dealer for not telling him that he couldn’t leave the driver’s seat while the vehicle was in motion, and won some enormous payout.

Then there are the stories we have all heard of criminals who have broken into someone’s home, and in the process have been somehow hurt, and have gone on to successfully sue the homeowner.

It seems to me that the law in these matters is simple: just prove that you are a total moron, and the court will award you buckets of someone else’s money. The bigger the idiot you prove to be, the more money the court will award you.

In the name of sanity, or even of that poor, battered and neglected old fellow, “Common Sense,” I’d like to suggest a few simple rules to be applied to compensation cases:

1. If the injury was the result of your own stupidity, you cannot claim against someone else.

2. If the injury occurred in an area for which you are responsible, you cannot claim against someone else.

3. If the injury occurred whilst you were in the process of committing a crime, you cannot claim anything (other than a one-way ticket to jail.)

How difficult would those be to enforce? How hard would it be for the law to stop being “a ass?”

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