Trust Inns bid to avoid big damages payment

by MA Reporter

A publican who claims his crushing work routine running an unruly Salford pub triggered heart failure is facing a renewed bid by his former employers to avoid paying him £100,000 in damages for his ordeal.

Edward Harding, 53, was struck down with the illness after running the Antelope, in Little Hulton, Salford, between 1997 and 1998.

The heart failure occurred in September 1998 after he claimed he had reached "the end of his tether" coping with intermittent threats and violence from locals, one incident of "virtual rioting", and a local gang's demands for protection money, London's Appeal Court has been told.

In February last year, Burnley County Court upheld his claim against the pub's owners, the Pub Estate Company, now called Trust Inns, ruling that it breached its "duty of care" by exposing Harding to overlong hours behind the bar.

The company, however, has asked the Court of Appeal to overturn that decision.

Pub Estate's counsel, Michael Kent QC, claimed the trial judge's findings contradicted the facts, and said that Harding never relayed concerns about his medical condition to his managers.

Harding, who now lives in Chorley, was working up to 80 hours per week before ill-health took its toll, his counsel, Charles Feemy, told the Appeal Court. By the summer of 1998 he was "physically exhausted" by having to deal with recurring episodes of violence inside and outside the pub.

Feemy told Lord Justice Scott Baker and Justice Wilson that Harding had been to his GP and told his employers "that the doctor thought he had been working hours that were too long, and that his health was being affected".

Those claims are denied by his ex-employers, but Feemy said the alleged ill-health complaints should have been "sufficient to make his employers take some action".

However, Kent said that Harding was a man with 17 years' experience behind him when he took over the reins at the Antelope.

He was, said Kent, by no stretch of the imagination a "delicate flower" and showed no signs of being unable to cope with his situation.

Judges are expected to reserve their judgment and give it in writing later.