“(a) Mr Reilly-Cooper’s Mixed Anxiety and Depressive Disorder appears to have been both precipitated and part caused by external events. These events relate to an accusation of sexual assault by a female civilian police employee. This accusation was made against Mr Reilly-Cooper and Mr Reilly-Cooper has consistently and persistently denied any wrongdoing whatsoever. Mr Reilly-Cooper states that his employers did not investigate the accusation in a satisfactory manner and furthermore that thereafter his dealings with his former employers, namely Merseyside Police, have been badly handled by his former employers. (b) Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, my understanding is that the precipitating/causational stress is associated with his being a Police Officer and not his service as a Police Officer. The stress was incurred by the original (I understand unsubstantiated) allegation and thereafter by employment related issues. I understand that such circumstances are not regarded as ‘an injury received in the execution of duty.’”
“38. Mr Reilly-Cooper became deeply upset about the way in which a grievance submitted by a member of his staff was handled. He was very concerned by the suggestion of inappropriately touching (the CCO’s) thigh, although this never formed part of the grievance. His feelings about the matter, and his view that there was poor handling of the issues by management led to him taking lengthy periods of absence due to stress and eventually led to his medical retirement. 39. Mr Reilly-Cooper further lost faith in the organisation, when the desired outcome he required from his own grievance was not met, and it would appear that his sense of bitterness developed further. His desired outcome was:- 40. Financial compensation for the perceived mismanagement of the issues. ACC Baxter made it clear to him that financial compensation was not possible, and totally outside the remit of grievance resolution. 41. A change in the decision to move him from the District Control Centre. Mr Baxter explained the logic behind the decision, which surrounded Terms and Conditions of employment, and the Force tenure policy. 42. Mr Reilly-Cooper states that he felt worried about the suggestion that he touched (the CCO’s) thigh and concerned about it becoming public knowledge. At the same time, he demanded a full investigation. A formal investigation would undoubtedly have led to the issue becoming generally known. 43. Mr Reilly-Cooper is now suggesting that his poor mental state is due to an injury received in the execution of his duties as a constable, and this is the issue now to be addressed. He says that his stress arose from the way in which the Force handled (the CCO’s) grievance, his own grievance and from the decision to move him. Can Mr Reilly-Cooper’s stress and anxiety be deemed to have resulted from the execution of his duty? 44. In the Stunt case, it was decided that an officer’s reaction to the discipline process would not found an injury on duty award, because his psychiatric injury resulted from his simply being a police officer and obliged to submit to discipline and not from his service as a police officer. 45. I would suggest that Mr Reilly-Cooper’s situation is very similar to that in the Stunt case, and therefore he is not eligible for injury award.”
“In short our client is suffering from Mixed Anxiety / Depressive Disorder caused by the treatment he received from senior management following a complaint made against him by a female support staff worker whom he was responsible for supervising. Our client is clear that it was not the actual complaint, but the way this was handled and the treatment he received that have caused his condition. It is our submission that in the circumstances are client is entitled to receive an injury award.”
“These all interacted with each other and all substantially contributed to the disablement. The last three in my opinion resulted from his being a police officer.”
“[Dr Kellam’s] statement that three of the four causes of Mr Milton’s emotional stress ‘resulted from his being a police officer’ must be read in context and is not to be taken literally: it meant that the stress caused by those matters resulted from circumstances which Mr Milton encountered as a serving police officer ... They are all to be seen as related to Mr Milton’s service as a police officer — to his work circumstances. That is more obviously true of factors 2 and 3 than it is of factor 4, but I consider it to apply even in the case of factor 4 ... [Dr Kellam] did not base his decision on the mere fact of Mr Milton being a police officer at the material time. He understood the nature of Mr Milton’s case, which was plainly directed to the effect on Mr Milton of events at work over a lengthy period.”
“The events leading up to retirement consisted of what he described as malicious allegation against him while he was working in the Houses of Parliament. He was made subject of an internal investigation by the police, felt betrayed by his colleagues and treated like a criminal. He felt a mixture of anger, frustration and hopelessness at fighting against a seemingly implacable system.” “Opinion: Mr Stunt suffered a severe depressive illness following proceedings brought against him [in 1993] and to some extent he is suffering from the after effects of this ... The disablement is not strictly speaking the result of an injury received in the execution of Mr Stunt’s duty but does arrive [sic] as a result of his reaction to the internal proceedings brought against him ...”
“Mr Stunt’s problems arise from both the fact that he feels it was a ‘terrible wrong’ that the investigation took place at all, mainly because he felt he conducted himself appropriately and this should have been clear to anyone taking an unbiased view of the situation and in addition, he feels he has a genuine grievance about the way in which the investigation was conducted once it started. He formed a strong impression that conclusions were drawn before the investigation even started, that the investigating officers had made up their mind and that this view is backed-up by the fact that he was strongly encouraged by the investigation team to plead guilty to the allegations and that they even spoke to his daughter at one point to encourage her to try and persuade him to change his mind.”
“34. It follows that I would regard the series of cases concluding with Kellam[2000] ICR 632 to have been rightly decided provided only and always that the officer’s ultimately disabling mental state had indeed been materially brought about by stresses suffered actually through being at work. In the majority of the decided cases this clearly was so; the significant part played by events at work was a consistent theme. In Kellam itself, however, that was by no means obvious. … 37. Without for a moment suggesting that [Richards J] was wrong to have done so — and I have done scant justice to his careful reasoning in that factually complicated case—I would at least suggest that Kellam takes to their limits the principles which he himself had deduced from the earlier cases. It was, as it seems to me, critical to his final conclusion that most if not all of the various stresses had borne more heavily upon Police Constable Milton because of his actually being at work and mixing with other police officers at the time. 38. That, of course, is not the position in the present case which is why, as both sides agree, it raises novel considerations. 39. As is plain from paragraphs 32, 33 and 39 of his judgment (already quoted), Grigson J found for Mr Stunt below on the basis that a police officer’s submission to the complaints procedure is required of him and is therefore in the execution of his duty. Since Mr Stunt’s injury resulted from his reaction to the investigation of the complaint, it followed that it was received in the execution of his duty. 40. The first point to be made about this basis of decision is that it recognises the essential passivity of the officer’s role in the disciplinary (or at any rate investigatory) process and that he is not obliged to co-operate: submission, which of course is unavoidable, is sufficient. 41. The second point to note is that the decision is reached quite independently of the circumstances initially giving rise to the complaint—here Mr Stunt’s arrest of Mr Marcus. The fact that, justified or not, that arrest was undoubtedly made in the execution of Mr Stunt’s duty is, Mr Millar fully accepts, nothing to the point: the complaint could just as well have been one of corruption, say of taking a bribe to overlook an offence, or perhaps of a failure to do his duty. 42. The decision, in short, depends upon the correctness of the view that simply because a police officer, by virtue of his office, is subject to a formal discipline code and procedure, with which he need not co-operate but which he cannot escape, any injury resulting from its operation is necessarily suffered in the execution of his duty. 43. In seeking to support this view, Mr Millar urges upon us a number of general considerations in favour of a benevolent construction of the Regulations. These include not least (a) the closely regulated nature of a police officer’s service and the requirement that he perform a wide variety of tasks in many testing situations and locations, (b) a police officer’s vulnerability by the very nature of his work to malicious allegations and ill-founded complaints, and (c) the fact that these Regulations form part of a contributory pension scheme. 44. I should note also Mr Millar’s contention that an officer’s duty, at any rate in a case like the present which, strictly analysed, involved a statutory investigation underPart IX of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 superimposed upon the police disciplinary proceedings, requires, subject always to privilege against self-incrimination, some degree of co-operation at least, if only the handing over of the officer’s notebook (police property in any event). I confess to having found this argument not merely difficult to follow but in any event unpersuasive: there was no suggestion here that Mr Stunt was required actively to co-operate in this investigation or even that his, plainly voluntary, attendance for interview of itself contributed to his stress. Rather the contrary, his concern was that the investigation was taking place at all and that it appeared to have been pre-judged against him. 45. In short, I do not accept that the resolution of this issue is capable of being affected by a minute analysis of the particular role played by the officer in the overall disciplinary process. The critical question, I repeat, is whether the officer’s mere subjection to the process of itself constitutes the execution of his duty. With regard to that bald question Mr Miller urges that the judge below was right. Conclusion on the narrower argument 46. Sympathetic though I am to police officers for the particular risk of disciplinary proceedings they run by the very nature of their office, I cannot for my part accept the view that if injury results from subjection to such proceedings it is to be regarded as received in the execution of duty. Rather it seems to me that such an injury is properly to be characterised as resulting from the officer’s status as a constable —‘simply [from] his being a police officer’ to use the language of paragraph 5 of Richards J’s conclusions in Kellam[2000] ICR 632 , 645 when pointing up the crucial distinction. This view frankly admits of little elaboration. It really comes to this: however elastic the notion of execution of duty may be, in my judgment it cannot be stretched wide enough to encompass stress-related illness through exposure to disciplinary proceedings. That would lead to an interpretation of regulation A11 that the natural meaning of the words just cannot bear. The applicant’s alternative argument 47. There is one final argument I must briefly notice: Mr Miller’s fall-back contention that Mr Stunt’s illness should in any event be regarded as having been occasioned whilst he continued to undertake police duties between receiving notice of the complaint in July 1993 and departing on sick leave in November 1993. Throughout this period, argues Mr Millar, a significant part of the stress Mr Stunt was suffering from the worry of the disciplinary investigation occurred whilst he was at work so as to make him eligible for an award even if his submission to the disciplinary process was not in itself in the execution of his duty. 48. This argument too I would reject. It seems to me wholly unrealistic to suppose that the fact of being at work during the course of the investigation actually exacerbated the stress from which Mr Stunt was suffering; if anything one might suppose that his duties at work helped to take his mind off his worries. Why should the mere fact of his continuing at work whilst the stress deepened qualify him for an award? Such a claim is no stronger than had he during this period been developing a heart condition or other constitutional disability. 49. There is this consideration too: had Mr Stunt been suspended from duty during the investigation (as many officers are), clearly no such argument would have been available to him. It would be surprising and unsatisfactory if for the purposes of an injury award in circumstances like these a distinction fell to be drawn between those suspended from duty and those continuing at work. In my judgment it does not.”
“54. This account, while referring to the fact that Mr Stunt felt betrayed by his colleagues and treated like a criminal, does not lead to the conclusion that the injury was caused by or received on police duty. It was the fact of the investigation and, to an extent, the manner in which it was conducted that gave rise to Mr Stunt’s depression. That seems to me to make unassailable Dr Mallett’s conclusion that his disablement ‘is not strictly speaking the result of an injury received in the execution of Mr Stunt’s duty but does arrive [sic] as a result of his reaction to the internal proceedings brought against him ...’”
“56. A number of authorities were referred to Grigson J and to us where a similar issue arose. There is one common element in each case in which the injury was held to have been sustained “in the execution of duty”