Stretching the point too far

Although it was interesting to read about the recent county court judgement concerning liability of door staff, I am not sure it deserved the publicity it got.

For one thing, it sets no precedent, nor does it bind any other court in different circumstances. It was an attempt by a young man, presumably legally advised, to claim damages against a security company in respect of

an assault committed not by them, but by another customer, who they had let into the night club.

I am sure the judge was quite correct in ruling that the duty of care owed by the doormen did not stretch to protecting customers to this extent.

Their job was indeed to weed out potential troublemakers on behalf of the management, but there would have to be a direct relationship between what they did and the assault, and even then in my view their obligation to "protect" other customers would be debatable.

Readers may remember the case not so long ago when a nightclub operator was found "vicariously liable" for an assault by a member of the door staff who were employed by a different company, but that was because the evidence showed that the club actually controlled the way the doormen carried out their job, so they were "deemed employees" for the evening.

This is an entirely different scenario. While doormen have a duty towards their actual employer and to the pub or club's operators, what they are required to do is normally to vet those entering and in certain cases to patrol the premises to identify potential trouble. Their duty is clearly to the operator. An altercation between patrons - regrettably inevitable in some cases - is just that, and unless the club itself can be shown to be negligent in some way, then no action will lie.

Perhaps this is another example of the growing tendency to use litigation lawyers on a "no win - no fee" basis to pursue unlikely claims in the hope of extracting some cash. They are still advertising their services on television, I note, in spite of some adverse publicity, and the licensed trade is a classic target for compensation claims of this kind. But most judges will not allow claimants to stretch a point too far, or we shall end up like the Americans, who claim for everything!