Geoffrey John James v Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE NOURSE,LORD JUSTICE RUSSELL |
| Judgment Date | 01 November 1990 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1990] EWCA Civ J1101-3 |
| Docket Number | 90/0887 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 01 November 1990 |
[1990] EWCA Civ J1101-3
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE COUNTY COURT
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE HALL)
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Nourse
Lord Justice Russell
90/0887
MR. KIERAN MAY (instructed by Messrs. Lawford & Co.) appeared for the Appellant (Plaintiff).
MR. SIMON HAWKESWORTH Q.C. and MR. MICHAEL TAYLOR (instructed by Messrs. Linsley & Mortimer) appeared for the Respondents (Defendants).
I will ask Lord Justice Russell to deliver the first judgment.
This is an appeal from a judgment of His Honour Judge Hall, sitting at the Newcastle upon Tyne County Court who, on 2nd August 1989, found in favour of the defendants in an action claiming damages for personal injuries arising out of an industrial accident. The accident occurred as long ago as 24th February 1983, when the plaintiff was employed by the defendants as an electrician at their Neptune Yard in Newcastle upon Tyne. The frigate, HMS York, was then under construction in the yard and the plaintiff was one of a team of men working upon the construction.
The part of the ship where the accident occurred was an area that was to become ultimately the operations room of the vessel. The main deck had been constructed and plated. The operations room, however, was to be at a level of something like 18 inches or so above the level of the main deck and, in order to achieve this, angle irons had been placed in position over which ultimately plates would be placed to create the operations room at a higher level than that occupied by the main deck. The overall dimensions of the operations room in the course of construction were 30' feet by 20 feet, in other words an area of something like 600 square feet. The angle irons which ran thwart ship were about two inches across and were so spaced that there was a gap of about three feet between each angle iron. The plaintiff's task as the works progressed was to fix cable bearers on the bulkheads within the operations room area.
The defendant employers had, prior to the accident, provided planks which ran across the angle irons and enabled workmen to pass to and fro, using the planks as footholds. Once at an individual place of work, however, it might have been that there were no planks in position and that the workman would make his way from one point to another, either by using the angle irons themselves as a foothold or by using the main deck as a foothold and stepping over the angle irons.
The plaintiff had been carrying out his duties within the ship for some little time prior to the accident, and had used the planks on many previous occasions. There was produced at the hearing a sketch plan prepared by the plaintiff and this showed that, in the normal course of events, planks were laid longitudinally through the area of the operations room from one door to another some 30 feet apart. On the plan the plaintiff had marked the place where he intended to work on the morning of his accident. It was on the bulkhead to the left of the door through which he entered the operations room.
Unbeknown to the plaintiff, as the judge found, workmen had, prior to the morning of the accident, no doubt for good reason in connection with their work, removed planks in the immediate vicinity of the door through which the plaintiff had to walk in order to gain access to the operations room. So, according to the plaintiff, unexpectedly, on the morning of his accident when he arrived to commence his shift (he thought that the planks would be in position when in fact they were not), he stumbled between the angle irons and damaged his knee. The accident, he asserted, was caused by the negligence or breach of statutory duty, or both, of the employer defendants.
Much of the time spent in considering this appeal has been directed to the allegation of breach of statutory duty pleaded in the statement of claim and advanced before the learned judge. It was common ground on the pleadings that the Ship Building and Ship Repairing Regulations of 1960 applied to the work upon which the plaintiff was engaged at the material time.
Regulation 6 of those regulations provides as follows:
" Safe access in general. Without prejudice to the other provisions of these Regulations there shall, so far as is reasonably practicable, be provided and maintained safe means of access to every place at which any person has at any time to work in connection with the operations, which means of access shall be sufficient having regard to the number of persons employed and shall, so far as is reasonably practicable, be kept clear of substances likely to make foothold or handhold insecure and of any obstruction."
The case for the plaintiff here was that the means of access provided for him on the morning of his accident were unsafe by virtue of the absence of planks at the place where he came through the door of the operations room; that it was reasonably practicable, as it had been in the past, to provide such planks; that without the planks the means of access was unsafe; and that, accordingly, the plaintiff was entitled to succeed on his allegation of breach of statutory duty.
Before the learned judge and before this court the submission on behalf of the defendants has been made that there was no breach of Regulation 6 of the 1960 regulations because, as the judge found, the planks that had been provided and laid across the angle irons did not create a means of access to a place of work. The whole operations room area, so it was and is submitted, was the plaintiff's place of work and, accordingly, the claim under the regulations failed.
The judge made a finding upon this aspect of the matter when he said at page 12 of the transcript:
"The question which is to be decided is whether there was firstly any statutory duty to place or maintain a walkway across the operations room. The duty under Regulation 6 of the Shipbuilding and Ship Repairing Regulations is to provide safe access. There is no similar provision in relation to the Plaintiff's place of work. It has been argued and I find that the operations room was the place of work, and the access was from the passageway at door 72."
That finding is attacked by Mr. May on behalf of the appellant plaintiff in so far as he submits that the place of work for the purposes of the regulations was such place within the operations room as the plaintiff was working from time to time in connection with the task that he had to perform, namely the fixing of cable bearers.
For the defendant employers Mr. Hawkesworth submits that the judge was right in holding that the whole area, some 600 square feet, represented the plaintiff's place of work. If, of course, Mr. Hawkesworth's submission is in accord with reality, then the positioning of the planks did not in any...
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