An employer who fitted a gas water heater with no flue in the bathroom of a house where his worker lived has been found solely to blame for the man’s death from carbon monoxide poisoning, after losing an appeal.
The Court of Appeal unanimously upheld a Nicosia District Court decision in a ruling dated 29 October.
The district court had rejected the employer’s claim that he warned the worker about the heater and told him not to use it. It found instead that he knew the man was going to use it, but neither took the necessary safety measures nor stopped him.
The worker, a Romanian man employed on roof insulation work, shared a rented house with a compatriot. Their employer paid the rent as part of their wages.
Four days before the man died, his employer installed a bottled gas water heater in the room used as a bathroom. The gas cylinder was outside, but no flue was connected to the heater to carry its fumes outdoors. The man died of asphyxiation from carbon monoxide while in the room.
Ruling on 11 March 2020, the district court found the installation dangerous because the fumes stayed inside the bathroom. Although the employer did not install water heaters for a living, he knew how they worked and that their fumes could become poisonous in certain conditions, the court found. He also knew the heater needed either a flue or to be placed outside the bathroom.
The case was brought by the administrators of the worker’s estate, who claimed damages on behalf of his legal heirs and dependants.
On appeal, the employer argued that the district court had not properly considered whether the worker was partly to blame for his own death. He also disputed that the unfinished installation had caused it.
The appeals court said the lower court had clearly found that the faulty installation caused the death, and that the employer had not challenged the findings behind that conclusion.
The employer also argued that the worker knew the installation was unfinished and had lived in the house for several days, and so had exposed himself to a foreseeable risk.
The court said that for the worker to share the blame, it would have to be shown that he knew the heater was dangerous and chose to use it anyway. The employer had not challenged the lower court’s rejection of his warning claim, nor its finding that he knew the worker would use the heater and did nothing to stop him. There was therefore no basis for holding the worker partly responsible, it said.
The court ordered the employer to pay 3,000 euros in costs, plus VAT where applicable, to the administrators of the worker’s estate.
