hello everyone and welcome to the first of our video tutorials on occupiers liability in this video we're going to be looking at the occupiers liability act 1957 occupiers liability is a talk that recognises that a person who's in control of land or property must conduct themselves in a certain manner in order to avoid injuring others this area of law is governed by two key statutes the occupiers liability at 1957. and the occupiers liability act 1984 and we also have quite a bit of case law that helps to um explain the definitions that are within those two statutes occupiers liability act 1957 relates to liability for injury to lawful trespasses whereas the occupiers liability act 1984 governs the liability to persons other than the occupiers visitors i.e its liability to trespasses but today we're going to be focusing on the 57 act we need to start by considering who an occupier is so who's going to be potentially liable in this tort the 1957 act section 1 subsection 2 doesn't actually state who is an occupier instead it states that common law rules apply so when we look to the common law we come to the case of wheat and lack on and this case identifies four different categories of occupier so tenants are occupiers when they're renting so even though they don't own the property they are still classed as occupiers landlords can be occupiers of parts of the building that they still have access to so even though a landlord might not be living in a property that they own that they're renting out they can still be an occupier to the communal areas that they might have a key to for instance owners um are obviously going to be occupiers under the act and interestingly independent contractors can sometimes be occupiers as well as the owner of the property next we need to consider what premises are under the act so it's obviously gonna cover houses but section one three a also includes any vessel meaning that boat vehicle or aircraft so an occupier is liable for any injury caused on his boat in his vehicle or in his aircraft if he's lucky enough to have one so the next thing to consider is who a lawful visitor is because the 57 act says that the occupier is liable for injuries caused to his lawful visitors so we need to make sure that we know who a lawful visitor is and under the common law a visitor is a person who either has express or implied permission to enter the premises so the express permission category refers to those who are expressly invited onto the premises by some means so they're a guest of the occupier but occupiers can limit the extent of an express invite in terms of place behavior or time so in other words when you invite a person into your home you can invite them at a certain time um to a certain part of the building and if they deviate from that place that they're entitled to go then they will actually become a trespasser and that's illustrated quite nicely by this quote from scrutin lord justice in a case called the kalgoth and he said quote when you invite a person into your house to use the staircase you do not invite him to slide down the banisters so what he's saying there is just because you've invited a person into your home doesn't mean that they can't become a trespasser that if a person goes beyond permission they exceed their permission they will become a trespasser and they're no longer a lawful visitor as well as express visitors people who are expressly invited onto the premises and the common law also classes implied visitors as lawful visitors of the occupier this implied permission category includes those who haven't been expressly invited onto the premises but their presence is assumed to be unobjectionable to the occupier so that might include people like um the postman a milkman um a delivery person they've not been expressly invited onto the premises but they have implied permission to be there we've established who the occupier is what the premises are and who's a lawful visitor we now have to consider what standard of care does the occupier owe these visitors and the relevant duty of care can be found in section 2 subsection 2 of the 1957 act and according to this section an occupier must take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe for the purposes for which he's permitted to be there so those are key words there the occupy needs to ensure that lawful visitors are reasonably safe 1957 act also gives some guidelines on applying the standard of care and it actually has a number of special visitors um discussed in the act so under section 23a it says that an occupier must be prepared for children to be less careful than adults one to two three b an occupier can expect a professional person in the exercise of their calling to appreciate the risks ordinarily involved one to two a warning may discharge the duty of care and 2-4-b the occupier is not liable for the fault of an independent contractor if they took reasonable steps to ensure they were competent so these four situations that are outlined in the 57 act are changing ever so slightly the standard of care that we've just discussed in section two tim so depending on whether your visitor is one of these special categories and that might affect the standard of care out so we're going to look at each of these in turn look at some cases to help explain what they mean in the case of children you can probably guess really why children are seen as being special visitors because typically children are going to do things in premises that you wouldn't expect adults to do they tend to be less careful they might get themselves into all sorts of scrapes and so we need to consider what duty does the occupier oven now in the case of phipps and rochester the court said that the responsibility for children of tender years rests primarily with the adult accompanying them so we've got key phrase here if i just highlight it 10 years whoops and as usual and that's pretty vague we're used to the courts being a bit vague with the tests that they give and so if a child is very young we would expect the main responsibility to be on the pairing and that seems quite fair i think in the case of jolly and sutton we looked at that case when we were looking at negligence the house of lords said that the court should not uh underestimate the ingenuity of children in finding unexpected ways of doing mischief so the occupier has to be prepared for children to do slightly unexpected things and needs to make sure that the property is safe from the eyes of a child if we have a look at professional callers then from section 23b um we've got the case of roles and nathan and this was a case where two chimney sweeps were killed by carbon monoxide fumes when they were sealing up a boiler um and the defendant occupier was not liable for their deaths under occupiers liability and the reason for that is that the chimney sweeps were class stars professional callers onto section 23b and the act says that we can expect professional callers to guard against risks that are ordinarily incident to their work and carbon monoxide fumes are something that's quite typically um experienced by chimney sweeps or it's certainly something that they need to be aware of in their line of work so that's a risk that's normally associated with their job so the occupier wasn't liable but i've put here if they'd fallen through a rotten floorboard of course the occupier would have been liable because dealing with rotten floorboards is not a risk that you would expect chimney sweeps to guard against so this seems fair as well that our defendant's not liable where the danger is a risk ordinarily involved with the job because the theory is i suppose that the professional caller is going to be more knowledgeable of the risks than the occupier in that case according to 24a the occupier can discharges duty by giving a warning of the danger and in derby and national trust our claimant drowned in a pond of deep murky water um and the court held in this case there was no duty to warn against obvious risks so they were saying you know it was quite clear what the risk was he was an adult he could see what the issue was and so there was no need to put signs around the pond because the risk was obvious in tomlinson and congleton which we'll look at a bit closer when we look at the 84 act the victim was held to be valentine that means that he consented to the risk when he ignored lots of warning signs around a lake and dived into it uh nonetheless and made himself paraplegic as a result so in that particular instance warning signs had discharged the duty for the occupier the um visitor had seen the signs and chosen to ignore them so he was valentine he had consented to that risk and the next in issue to consider sorry is dangers caused by independent contractors onto 24b so if a visitor suffers damage because there's been some faulty workmanship done by an independent contractor the occupier is not normally liable so long gas it was reasonable to entrust the work to the independent contractor the occupy took reasonable steps to check they were competent and the occupy took reasonable steps to check that the work had been properly done and we illustrate this by looking at two key cases so hazel dean indoors an easy one to remember hazel dean and door fell through the floor our clayman here was killed when a lift shaft um fell to the sorry when a lift fell to the bottom of its shaft due to the negligence of independent contractors the occupier was not liable in occupiers liability because he had trusted this technical work on the lift to the independent contractors and it was reasonable to trust this technical work to them and he couldn't have been expected to inspect this work of a technical nature we always contrast hazel dean and door with woodward and the mayor of hastings and in this case the pupil was injured when he slipped on a snow-covered step and the occupier tried to blame an independent contractor i.e the cleaner but the occupier was found to be liable here and the court said that if the work is of a routine nature requiring no skill or expertise the occupier may be expected to check it so in other words it was quite clear to see that the snow had not been cleared off the step anyone could see that you didn't have to be a technical expert to establish that so the occupier was expected to check that work and because he didn't he's liable in occupiers liability in terms of defenses we've already mentioned that the occupier could give a warning of the danger which gives our visitor every chance to avoid the danger valentine unfit in georgia so if a victim ignores a risk he can sense that should say sorry i'll put an s in there contributory negligence is where we might damage sorry is where damages may be reduced where the visitor has failed to take reasonable care for their own safety and we can also exclude liability um under section 2 1 which allows an occupy to extend restrict exclude or modify insofar as he's free to do so so that's the 57 act i just want to end by um showing you this slide so this summarizes what i've just talked you through that the 57 act we've looked at who an occupier is using wheat what premises are including boats vehicles and aircraft and we've looked at the common duty of care which is to keep the visitor reasonably safe but that may vary depending on whether you've got a child a professional caller the work was done by an independent contractor and also there might have been a warning given and we've looked at the cases on that in our next video tutorial we're going to look at the occupiers liability act 1984