Thomas Brown, a plumber employed by K&T Heating Services, had his hand crushed in a door and was punched twice in the face by the son at the mother's council property. The attack left him traumatised, shaking, and violently sick when he returned home. Mr. Browne tried to calm the son down, but after ringing a colleague, he was told to 'get out of there'. The son stood in front of the door and refused to let Mr. Browne leave until the issue was resolved.
Mr. Browne sued his employers, K&T Heating Services, to whom the council had outsourced its engineering maintenance contracts. After a four-day trial, Judge Lawrence Cohen KC ruled in favour of Mr. Browne, holding his employers at fault for not flagging previous concerns about the angry resident. The judge criticised K&T Heating's 'sloppy' system for logging troubling episodes and had no doubt that past incidents were reported as claimed by Mr. Browne's colleagues.
Mr. Browne had gone to the home to carry out a 'radiator survey' in March 2020, the seventh engineers' appointment at the property in only four months. According to Helen Nugent, barrister for Mr. Browne, there was a history of aggression and violence at the property. Colleagues had previously reported being the subject of 'aggressive language' and 'threats' over the quality of work. Nugent argued that Mr. Browne ought to have been better protected and not sent there alone, and that a risk of harm was 'reasonably foreseeable' for a lone front-line worker engaging directly with the public in their homes.