The rules established on the subject of accident prevention at work, aimed at preventing the onset of dangerous situations, are aimed at protecting the worker not only from accidents deriving from his inattention, but also from those attributable to his inexperience, negligence and imprudence; it follows that the employer is always responsible for the accident occurring to the worker, both when he fails to adopt the appropriate protective measures, and when he fails to ascertain and supervise that these measures are actually used by the employee, since no exempting effect can be attributed to any contributory negligence on the part of the worker; with the further consequence that the employer is exempted from liability only when the employee's behavior presents the characteristics of abnormality, unquestionable and exorbitant with respect to the working procedure and the directives received, as well as atypical and exceptional, so as to act as the exclusive cause of the event.
In the event of violation of the rules aimed at protecting the physical integrity of the worker, the employer is fully responsible for the resulting injury and cannot invoke the contributory negligence of the injured party, since he has the duty to protect the latter's safety despite his imprudence or negligence; it follows that, in all hypotheses in which the conduct of the employee ends up by being configured in the etiology of the harmful event as a mere method of the production process of the damage, this conduct, precisely because it is "imposed" due to the situation of subordination in which the employee finds himself, must be charged to the employer, whose conduct, instead resulting in the violation of specific accident prevention regulations (or rules of common prudence) and in order to perform dangerous work tasks, acts as the only efficient causal factor le of the harmful event.
[Adv. Ennio Grassini – www.dirittosanitario.net]
May 14, 2013 – DoctorNews33
