On 28 March 2025, the Supreme Court issued a decision concerning the application of the reversal of the burden of proof in employment law.
Legal rule
Under Article 7:658 of the Dutch Civil Code, an employer may be held liable for damage sustained by an employee in the performance of their duties, unless the employer can demonstrate that they have fulfilled their duty of care.
Under the principles of evidence law, the general rule is: he who alleges, must prove. In other words, the party who makes a claim bears the burden of proof to substantiate it. However, labour law recognises an important exception to this rule, the so-called reversal rule (arbeidsrechtelijke omkeringsregel). This principle plays a key role in distributing the burden of proof between the employer and the employee in cases involving workplace accidents or work-related illnesses.
According to the reversal rule, if an employee is exposed to conditions that pose a risk to health during the performance of their duties and subsequently suffers damage that can reasonably be linked to those conditions, a causal connection between the work and the harm is presumed. In such cases, the burden of proof shifts to the employer, who must establish that it took all reasonably necessary measures to prevent the damage. Thus, in deviation from the general rule, the burden of proving causation does not rest with the employee in these cases.
Legal proceedings
Both the District Court and the Court of Appeal found that the incidents involving B and the broader working conditions could not be regarded as objectively harmful. It was therefore not established that the employee worked under health-threatening conditions. Consequently, Samsung was not found to have breached its duty of care, and the employee’s claims were dismissed.
On appeal to the Supreme Court, the employee argued that the Court of Appeal had misapplied Article 7:658 DCC and the reversal of the burden of proof, and had failed to consider the working conditions in their entirety. The Supreme Court rejected these arguments, holding that they did not justify overturning the appellate decision.
Takeaway
This ruling confirms that while the reversal of the burden of proof may lower the threshold for employees in establishing causation, it does not relieve them of the obligation to prove both that harm was suffered and that they were exposed to workplace conditions that could reasonably have caused such harm.