An NHS worker who suffered a fractured lower spine after a colleague yanked her chair away in a “spur of the moment” prank is suing hospital bosses for £58,000 in compensation.
Meeta Patel, 29, landed “heavily onto the floor” when her pharmacist colleague Rashid Khan whipped the seat away as she went to sit down.
Mr Khan insisted that it had been a “random act” for a joke but Ms Patel suffered a badly injured coccyx, Central London county court heard.
Ms Patel is suing bosses at Homerton University Hospital, claiming the hospital should bear responsibility for Mr Khan’s actions.
“To this day, I still don’t really know why I did it,” Mr Khan told the court. “I think I thought it would be funny and I thought she would laugh. It was an unexplained spur of the moment decision, which I now very much regret.” He said he and Ms Patel had always got on well and that he believed she had noticed the chair being pulled away.
“We always managed to add some humour in the office,” he said.
Abigail Holt, Ms Patel’s barrister, said she had been “so engrossed in her work” that she had no chance to spot the chair being moved in the incident in August 2012.
“In moving the chair the moment before Mr Khan knew she was about to sit down, he committed an obvious breach of the duty of care that he owed Ms Patel as a fellow employee,” she said.
Homerton University Hospital NHS foundation trust denies liability for the accident, insisting that Mr Khan’s motives remain unclear and that what he did was not part of his job.
The hearing, before Judge Heather Baucher QC, continues.
