Abstract

Hong Kong is notorious for her high construction accidents rates. Although the accidents rate has dropped from 350 per 1000 workers in mid 1980 to 60 per 1000 workers in 2007, it still accounted for nearly one-fifth of all the industrial accidents in Hong Kong. Contractors were economically pressed and battered by exorbitant compensation over the years. This paper presents a comprehensive study of non-fatal accidents compensation court cases from 2004 to 2008. Although approximately one-third of the cases with injured persons aged between 47 and 56, the percentage of court cases over construction employees by age group was highest in age group 17-26. In terms of trade of workers, General laborers/causal workers stood the highest, then came electrical technicians and painters/decorators/plasterers. The highest rates of injury were falling from height and hitting by falling objects. Increasing from HK$10,997,637 in 2004, the total compensation reached the peak of HK$39,643,353 in 2006. The heaviest compensation was HK$13,800,000 among 101 cases. Most of the victims were compensated under loss of earnings and Pain Suffering and Loss of Amenities. While general labourers marked the highest number of cases, less than one-fourth of them were awarded compensation which exceeded HK$1,500,000. Four out of seven steel benders who filed court cases, however, received compensation greater than HK$1.5 million for each case. Those who were struck by objects had relatively the highest chance to be compensated with a huge sum of money.

Highlights

  • An estimation on percentage of compensation spent on a) Pain Suffering and Loss of Amenities (PSLA), b) Loss of earning, c) Loss of earning capacity, d) Special damages, e) Future treatment costs

  • While some authors concede that young workers have higher chance of accidents due to lack of experience, others argue that accident rate among older workers is not lower than that of younger ones (Li, 2006)

  • This research reveals that majority of the serious injuries come from the age group (47-56) which accounts for 30 among the 101 court cases, age group 27-36 and 17-26 marks for 18 and 15 cases respectively

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Summary

Liability of contractors on workers’ safety under common law

In Hong Kong, it is widely accepted that ‘judge made law’ resulting from former court cases decided by judges in Hong Kong, UK and other common law jurisdictions. By the time system or mode of operation is highly dangerous, complicated or involves a number of men performing different functions or prolonged, it is naturally a matter for the employers to take the responsibilities of deciding what system shall be adopted This view is confirmed in one of the recent court cases in Hong Kong, the learned judge held that " (f)irst, an employer owes to his employee a duty to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the system of work provided for him is a safe one. Any contractor or workman engaged in construction work who does anything likely to endanger himself without reasonable cause or others shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine of HK$50,000 (Regulation 69) This might provide one of the reasons why arguments over level of compensation arise and some of which end up in court

Research method
Results
Mechanism of injury
Parts of bodies injured
Compensation awarded in 2004-2008
Conclusions
Full Text
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