This article was written by Liam Ryan.
The facts
On the evening of 3 July 2021, Mrs Cheryl Seppings was working a shift as a barmaid at The New Inn in Roughton, a pub she had served for more than six years. Walking from the restaurant through a tiled hallway towards the bar, she fell, fracturing her left wrist.
She sued her employer in negligence and under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 (‘OLA’), arguing that the defendant had failed to maintain a safe system of work and safe premises. Master Armstrong tried liability only on 3 and 4 February 2026.
The outcome was unexpected, and instructive.
Breach: Clear and Quickly Established
The defendant’s health and safety arrangements were, to put it plainly, thin. The primary measure was a verbal ‘clean-as-you-go’ instruction to staff: be vigilant for spillages, deal with them when you see them. There were no written risk assessments, no inspection logs, no documented cleaning regime, no training records.
The Master acknowledged that the claimant knew where the mops, buckets, blue roll, and yellow warning signs were kept. A verbal policy had been communicated. But the absence of documentation was not the absence of a policy — it was, as the court found, a failure to take the policy seriously enough “A ‘clean-as-you-go policy’ is not in my view sufficient to meet the duty to take reasonable care for the safety of the claimant … There ought at the very least to be a documented system to ensure the passing of this information to the claimant and record that she has been so informed. There ought then to be regular reminders to comply with the system so that the policy is seen as something more than just a nod to safety.” (Paragraphs 46)
The Master’s rebuke was pointed but fair. Documented safety policies are not costly or complex for a small premises with limited public areas. The defendant’s inability even to produce a Roster Sheet for the night in question was treated as evidence of a wider institutional disregard for record-keeping. Breach was established, clearly, and without too much difficulty.
Causation: Where the Claim Came Apart
Despite the finding of breach, the claim failed entirely. The reason was causation, and the reason for that failure was the evidence the claimant was unable to give.
The claimant account of the fall was vague. She described walking into the bar area and slipping. She could say no more than that. She neither identified nor described any spillage, liquid, or debris on the floor at any point before or after the fall. Under cross-examination, she accepted frankly “I don’t know if there was anything on the floor.” (Paragraphs 47).
Her position, reduced to its essence, was: ‘I slipped — there must have been something there.’ That inference is understandable from her perspective. It is not, however, evidence. Crucially, Mr Crampsie gave evidence that he inspected the floor immediately after the accident and found it dry and clear of any hazard. The claimant challenged this, arguing he could not have done so because he was standing with her at the time. The Master rejected that challenge. She had been moved to the restaurant after the fall; she could only account for Mr Crampsie’s whereabouts when he was actually with her, not before or after. The inspection evidence was accepted.
Against that positive finding, the claimant’s supposition could not succeed. The Master was direct at paragraphs 48 “The claimant has made an assumption and stated ‘there must have been something for me to slip on’. I am unable to make that same assumption or reach that same conclusion.”
And the consequence of that finding was decisive. Even taking the defendant’s health and safety failures at their highest, “Even if there had been a documented cleaning and inspection regime, a documented training programme, more staff on duty, less customers on site, documented risk assessments, or staff handbook, the accident would not have been prevented given the absence of a liquid or hazard on the floor.” (Paragraphs 50)
The claim was dismissed.
Why This Case Matters
Seppings is a valuable reminder of a principle that is easy to state and hard to apply: breach and causation are separate questions. Establishing one does not establish the other.
In slip-and-fall litigation there is a persistent temptation to reason backwards. An accident happened. Conditions were poor. Therefore conditions caused the accident. Courts will not follow that chain unless each link is evidenced.
For claimants and their advisers, the lesson is an uncomfortable one. Where there is no positive evidence of a hazard — no witness who saw a spillage, no photograph, no prior complaint, no pattern of incidents — causation becomes very difficult to establish. The ‘must have been something’ inference, however human, is not a substitute for evidence. Here, the absence of any supporting witness evidence, any pattern of incidents, and any account of people carrying drinks through the relevant area in the material period proved fatal.
For defendants and their insurers, the judgment carries an equally pointed message. The defendant escaped liability — but not because their systems were satisfactory. They escaped because the claimant could not prove what was on the floor. A verbal clean-as-you-go instruction is not a health and safety policy. Defendants who rely on undocumented, informal arrangements do so at real risk in cases where the evidential picture is less clear.
The OLA and employee status. The defendant argued that the OLA did not apply at all, on the basis that the claimant was an employee rather than a visitor. Master Armstrong rejected this without hesitation. Employee and visitor are not mutually exclusive. An employee lawfully on the premises is a visitor within the meaning of the Act, and the common duty of care applies. Practitioners advising defendants in employer-occupier cases should be aware that the dual duty, common law negligence and OLA, runs concurrently, at the same standard.
The continuing relevance of the Regulations. The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 removed civil liability for breaches of workplace health and safety regulations. That point was undisputed. But the court confirmed that the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 remain evidentially significant as a guide to what a reasonable occupier should do. Not legally actionable but are far from irrelevant.
The defendant safety arrangements were found wanting. Their record-keeping was characterised by the court as evidence of a wider disregard. And yet the claim failed, because without evidence of a hazard on the floor, there was nothing for the defendant’s failures to have caused.
Causation is not a technicality. It is the question. And in this case, the claimant could not answer it.
