Bottling plant worker awarded almost £45,600 for noise induced hearing loss

A bottling plant worker has been successful in the All-Scotland Sheriff Personal Injury Court in recovering compensation of £45,594.13 for hearing loss and tinnitus caused by excessive exposure to noise during her employment as a line operator at Scotch whisky company Chivas Brothers Ltd.

On 28 February 2023, Sheriff Campbell found in favour of the claimant, Mrs Denny, as a result of damage to her hearing, which she maintained was occasioned by exposure to injurious levels of noise in the course of her employment with the company in the years since 1990.

Mrs Denny worked as a line operator in the company’s Newton bottling hall from 1990 until 2000 and in its Kilmalid bottling plant since 2000. From 2000 until 2018, she mainly worked as a line operator in the Leven Bottling Hall and occasionally in the Clyde Bottling Hall. Since 2018, she has worked in an office at the plant, where she is not exposed to significant noise.

Evidence was heard that the main bottling hall in which she worked comprised of a partly manual and partly mechanised process. In both bottling halls, she worked alongside machines, including rinser and filler machines and labeller and packer machines, all of which emitted various levels of noise. The bottles travelled from one step on line to the next line along conveyor belts. Bottles on the conveyers knocked against each, producing noise. There were regular bottle breakages, which added to the overall noise level.

Sheriff Campbell accepted Mrs Denny’s evidence that hearing protection was not provided when she started work with the company in 1990. That was consistent with the evidence of other line operators. The line operator witnesses spoke of the first type of protection being introduced being yellow foam ear plugs in or around 1995 or 1996, and all were agreed that there was no instruction or training in their use. There was no assessment by the company of the sufficiency of the protection afforded by the hearing protection introduced in 1996. Nor was there any evidence that it monitored use when hearing protection was initially introduced.

 Lawyers for Mrs Denny submitted that there were no noise level assessments for the bottling hall for the period 1990 to 2000, that there was no noise level assessment in Leven Hall until 2006 and that the adequacy of at least some of the noise assessments from 2006 was questionable. The noise surveys lacked adequate description of how the measurements were made, and there were no records of line speeds at the time of the noise surveys. Mrs Denny argued that the company produced no documentation or evidence as to any comparative exercise undertaken by it of the different types of hearing protection provided over the years.

The company’s position was that the measured noise levels did not disclose any breach of duty at common law or under the Noise at Work Regulations. Indeed it sought to argue that the attenuation of noise levels by ear plugs removed the risk of hearing damage.

Finding in favour of Mrs Denny, Sheriff Campbell concluded that Chivas Brothers had breached the duties incumbent upon it to reduce noise, other than by the introduction of hearing protection. The Court accepted the evidence of the line operator witnesses that the company provided no instruction or training about the use of hearing protection when it was first introduced in the mid-1990s. Sheriff Campbell opined that the fact that the company had instituted audiometry for its employees, including Mrs Denny, from at least 1991, demonstrated that it was alive to levels being in excess of the actionable level of 85dB, and failed to provide suitable and sufficient risk assessments accordingly.

Sheriff Campbell further stated that the onus of demonstrating that the level of noise had been reduced to the lowest level reasonably practicable was on the company. Given the findings that he made regarding noise levels in the Newton Bottling Hall, the absence of risk assessment of noise in either Newton Hall or Leven Hall until 2006, and also the absence of evidence of engineering solutions other than provision of ear plugs, Sheriff Campbell was not satisfied that the company had demonstrated that the level of noise had been reduced to the lowest level reasonably practicable.

In addition to breaches of statutory duty, Sheriff Campbell held that the company was also in breach of its duty at common law to take reasonable care for the safety of the employee and not to expose her unnecessarily to risk of injury.

If you would like advice on pursuing a compensation claim for industrial deafness, please get in touch with our approachable, expert personal injury team.

Email Jacqueline Raitt
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