Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 12:09:09 -0400

From: Jason Neyers

Subject: Nervous Shock in Australia

Dear Colleagues:

The Aus. HC has recently released Koehler v Cerebos (Australia) Ltd [2005] HCA 15, an interesting little case dealing with nervous shock in the context of employment stress. From the headnote:

Negligence - Duty of care - Psychiatric injury - Content of an employer's duty to an employee to take reasonable care to avoid psychiatric injury - Whether employer breached its duty to provide employee with a safe system of work by failing to take the steps identified by employee - Whether reasonable person in position of employer would have foreseen the risk of psychiatric injury to the employee - Relevance of employee's agreement to perform the work which brought about her injuries - Whether the law of negligence should be developed in such a way as to inhibit the making of agreements involving more work than an industry standard.

Contract - Contract of employment - Freedom of parties to stipulate that an employee will do more work than an industry standard - Whether the law of negligence should be developed in such a way as to inhibit the making of agreements involving more work than an industry standard.

Cheers,

--
Jason Neyers
January Term Director
Assistant Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
University of Western Ontario
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435

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