Fife Coal Company Ltd v Young (William)
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | The Lord Chancellor,Lord Atkin,Lord Romer |
| Judgment Date | 14 March 1940 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1940] UKHL J0314-1 |
| Court | House of Lords |
| Docket Number | No. 1. |
| Date | 14 March 1940 |
[1940] UKHL J0314-1
Lord Chancellor
Lord Atkin
Lord Thankerton
Lord Russell of Killowen
Lord Romer
House of Lords
After hearing Counsel for the Appellants as well on Thursday the 1st, as on Monday the 5th, Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th, days of February last, upon the Petition and Appeal of The Fife Coal Company, Limited, having their Registered Office at Leven, and having offices and works and carrying on business at Kinglassie Colliery, praying, That the matter of the Interlocutor set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Interlocutor of the Lords of Session in Scotland, of the First Division, of the 23d of June 1939, might be reviewed before His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, and that the said Interlocutor might be reversed, varied, or altered, or that the Petitioners might have such other relief in the premises as to His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of William Young, lodged in answer to the said Appeal and Counsel appearing for the Respondent, but not being called upon; and due consideration being had this day of what was offered for the said Appellants:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the Court of Parliament of His Majesty the King assembled, That the said Interlocutor, of the 23d day of June 1939, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Appellants do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Respondent the Costs incurred by him in respect of the said Appeal, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments: And it is also further Ordered, That unless the Costs, certified as aforesaid, shall be paid to the party entitled to the same within One Calendar Month from the date of the Certificate thereof, the Cause shall be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to the Court of Session in Scotland, or to the Judge acting as Vacation Judge, to issue such Summary Process or Diligence for the recovery of such Costs as shall be lawful and necessary.
My Lords,
This is an Appeal from the First Division of the Court of Session allowing an appeal from an award of the Sheriff-Substitute of Fife and Kinross in an arbitration under the Workmen's Compensation Act. The facts appear partly from a statement by the Sheriff-Substitute of admissions at the Bar by Agents for the parties, and partly from a note of facts found by the Sheriff-Substitute to be proved. The two statements to some extent overlap. Notwithstanding a submission by Counsel for the Appellants towards the end of his argument that there should be a remit to the Arbitrator for a further statement, the facts seem to me to be clearly stated and are sufficient to enable this Appeal to be determined.
The Claimant had been employed by the Appellant for about a month preceding the 27th April, 1938, as a packer in building pillars to support the roof of the underground workings at Kinglassie Colliery. At the place where he worked the height of the roof was only 2½ to 3 feet; and the position he normally adopted in doing his work as a packer was a crouching attitude with the outside of his right knee pressing on the pavement. During the month for which the Claimant was working as packer he suffered from some loss of power to dorsiflex his right foot, or in other words to raise the front part of his right foot upwards. On the 27th April, while engaged in his ordinary work as a packer, towards the end of his shift he worked in the crouching position already described. After about 20 minutes he felt his right foot numb. He finished his shift and was then able to walk home with the assistance of his father who was working with him. The Claimant consulted his usual medical attendant, who diagnosed his condition as suffering from dropped foot. "Dropped foot" is a paralysis of the muscles of the leg caused by pressure on the peroneal nerve which passes over the bone below the knee, and resulting in inability to raise the front part of the foot upwards. Incapacity from dropped foot arising in this manner is a comparatively rare condition.
The Claimant claimed compensation in respect of injury by accident sustained on or about the 27th April. His incapacity was admitted to have arisen out of, and in the course of, his employment, and the only question which your Lordships have to decide is whether on these facts the Sheriff-Substitute was entitled to find that the Claimant's incapacity was not due to injury by accident within the meaning of Section 1 of the Workmen's Compensation Act. The First Division of the Court of Session held that the Sheriff-Substitute was not entitled so to find and from that decision this Appeal arises.
The phrase "injury by accident" as used in successive Workmen's Compensation Acts has been the subject of repeated and elaborate discussion, and in the course of the 40 years or more which have passed since the first decisions under the Act of 1897, it is possible, as Lord Tomlin pointed out in a case which I shall mention, to trace a gradual but steady extension of its meaning. The early cases seem to have been decided on the footing that "accident" was to be interpreted in the sense in which it was understood in policies of insurance as describing some event of a fortuitous and unexpected character. The first case that came to your Lordships' House was the case in which the workman had ruptured himself by an act of over-exertion ( Fenton v. Thorley (1903), A.C. 443). The decision reversing the award of the Arbitrator and the Court of Appeal was in favour of the workman. Lord Macnaghten came to the conclusion that the expression "accident" was used in the Act "in the popular and ordinary sense of the word as denoting an unlooked for mishap or an untoward event which is not expected or designed." He disapproved the use of the word "fortuitous" as a test and, on the other hand, quoted with approval a passage from Lord M'Laren's Opinion in ( Stewart v. Wilson's & Clyde Coal Co., Ltd. 5 F. 120). "If a workman in the reasonable performance of his duties sustains a physiological injury as the result of the work he is engaged in … this is accidental injury in the sense of the Statute." Lord Robertson understood "accident" to be not a technical legal term with a clearly defined meaning. "Speaking generally," he said, "but with reference to legal liabilities, an accident means any unintended and unexpected occurrence which produced hurt or loss." These statements and the decision in favour of the workman opened the door to claims which up to that time had failed. It is easy to be wise after the event, but to-day Fenton v. Thorley seems a very clear case.
The anthrax case ( Brintons Ltd. v. Turvey (1905), A.C. 230) was much more difficult, as may be seen from the Opinion of Lord Robertson, who with undeniable force protested against the extension of the definitions given in Fenton v. Thorley in such a way as to cover disease. In view of a later decision, to which I shall refer, it is of some interest to observe Lord Robertson's opinion that nobody could think of saying that a man who had caught cold had met with an accident....
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Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Scullion [2010] EWCA Civ 310 CI 2842 2006
...is neither expected or designed”, there was, even before Faulds, a clear line of House of Lords’ authority from Fife Coal Co Ltd v Young [1940] AC 479 onwards in which judges had insisted on the distinction between the “accident”, which must be external, and the resulting “injury” to the cl......