A head contractor that assumes an advisory and supervisory role on safety matters through contractual arrangements and site inspections owes a duty of care to subcontractors' employees that extends to all parts of the worksite where it is reasonably foreseeable those employees will work, and cannot limit the scope of its duty by reference to the scope of its actual inspection system. In contribution proceedings, the reasonableness of a settlement must be assessed objectively by asking whether the settlement figure was within the limits of reasonable tolerance looked at as a settlement, not by reference to the subjective considerations of the settling parties. The court was divided on whether an experienced employee's instinctive action in pulling a scaffold backwards without checking, in a known hazardous environment, constituted contributory negligence or mere inadvertence.
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