A principal contractor who controls the worksite, designates work, provides equipment, and knows that employees of independent contractors are required to access dangerous areas in the principal's interests owes a duty of care to those employees to provide a safe system of access, equivalent to the employer's duty in respect of provision (as distinct from implementation) of the system. On causation in nervous shock claims, a plaintiff's failure to mention the alleged traumatic cause to treating practitioners for 17 months, combined with contemporaneous complaints about other plausible causes, may be fatal to establishing causation.
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