Hampshire police will have to pay £150,000 of public money to lawyers after losing a legal appeal today against compensation given to an officer who cut her thumb while dismantling a cannabis factory.

Kerry Ann Taylor, a PC, was nauseous from cannabis fumes when she cut her thumb on broken glass while uprooting plants at a flat on September 4 2008, following a drugs bust.

PC Taylor, who still serves with the Hampshire force, sued her Chief Constable, claiming the force had breached its duty as her employer by allowing her to be exposed to the intoxicating fumes and failing to provide her with thick gardening gloves.

The chief constable fought the case, but today lost when Court of Appeal judges upheld PC Taylor's £4,837 damages payout.

As the price of defeat, the force will also have to pay legal costs bills estimated at £150,000.

The court heard PC Taylor's task was to uproot plants and dump them in a skip outside the flat in Devonshire Avenue, Southsea.

Her superiors thought that the only risk to her was skin irritation from contact with cannabis leaves and issued her with thin latex gloves.

Her head swimming due to the effects of cannabis fumes, she tried to open a window, forgetting it had been sealed, and pushed her hand through a glass pane, suffering a cut to her right thumb.

At Winchester County Court last year, Judge David Blunt QC upheld PC Taylor's damages claim, ruling that the force had breached the duty it owed her under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.

The force challenged that decision, insisting that it had done all it was obliged to do to protect PC Taylor and that, had she confined herself to pulling up plants, she would never have been at any risk from sharp edges.

Attacking Judge Blunt's ruling as setting an unrealistically high standard, the Chief Constable argued it was "absurd" to expect the force to allocate a specific task to each officer involved in the operation and to carry out individual risk assessments.

However, dismissing the force's appeal, Lord Justice Elias said the duty on employers was a tough one and the risk to PC Taylor, however slight, could have been avoided by the simple means of issuing her with heavy-duty gloves.

Sitting with Lord Justice Patten, he said PC Taylor would have been exposed to a 'whole range' of risks whilst clearing the cannabis farm and the conclusion that the force had breached its legal duty to protect her was 'plainly open' to Judge Blunt.

There was, the court ruled, also "no injustice" in ordering the force to pay PC Taylor's legal costs bills.

Her barrister, Andrew Roy, earlier told the court: "The whole place was a nest of wires. All these risks were magnified given that there was little ventilation and a nauseating atmosphere hazardous to health."