High Court dismisses employer liability claim over Storm Eunice death in White v Hooke Highways

The High Court has dismissed a negligence claim brought against a traffic management company following the death of a 23 year old employee who was killed when a tree fell on his works van during Storm Eunice in February 2022, finding the accident was not reasonably foreseeable despite a Red Weather Warning being in force at the time.

Master Šabić KC heard the claim brought by the parents of Jack Bristow, acting as personal representatives of his estate, against his former employer Hooke Highways Limited, following a trial confined to the question of the company's liability. Jack had been four months into a six month probationary period as a trainee traffic management operative when he and a colleague, Callum Smith, were assigned to collect traffic equipment from a site in Woking on the morning of 18 February 2022, transport it to a depot in Hampshire, and return to their base in Oxfordshire. The Met Office had issued a Red Weather Warning covering the region from 10am that day, and the job had not been discussed or cancelled at a management call held that morning to address the storm's expected impact. On the return journey, a large tree fell directly onto the cab of their van on the Old Odiham Road, killing Jack instantly and injuring his colleague. A subsequent inquest concluded the tree fall had not been reasonably foreseeable, describing it as the vehicle being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The claimants argued that Hooke Highways had failed to conduct a suitable and sufficient risk assessment in response to the Red Weather Warning, and that a reasonable employer would either have declined to undertake the Woking job that day, arranged for local Hampshire based staff to attend instead, or instructed the two men to remain at the Hampshire depot until conditions improved. Master Šabić rejected each of these contentions. She found that a Red Weather Warning is advisory rather than a prohibition on travel, that its stated dangers centred on flying debris and disruption rather than any specific risk of a falling tree striking a vehicle on an ordinary road, and that the journey itself used standard domestic infrastructure rather than anything inherently hazardous. Applying the established test from Whippey v Jones, she concluded there needed to be a sufficient probability of injury to lead a reasonable employer to anticipate it, and that the risk here, while elevated compared with ordinary conditions, remained a remote possibility rather than one a prudent employer ought to have foreseen.

On the question of risk assessment, the judge accepted evidence that Hooke Highways had taken active steps in response to the storm, including a prohibition on lone working, coordination between depots and welfare checks on operatives working during the adverse conditions. She found the Woking job to be essential public infrastructure work that could not reasonably have been delayed, that the Hampshire depot was already operating at capacity and unable to supply a substitute crew, and that instructing the two men to remain in Hampshire against their evident wish to return home would have been artificial and unrealistic. Citing Uren v Corporate Leisure, the judge emphasised that even an inadequate risk assessment gives rise to liability only where a proper one would probably have led to a precaution that would probably have prevented the injury, and found the claimants had not established what such an assessment would realistically have revealed, noting also the absence of any evidence about industry standards for other employers operating during red weather warnings.

The claim against Hooke Highways was dismissed, with the judge observing that imposing the standard of care contended for by the claimants risked making liability a matter of chance rather than fault. The judgement does not affect a separate claim against the landowner from whose property the tree fell, which remains to be determined.