Grant v National Coal Board
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Viscount Simonds,Lord Reid,Lord Tucker,Lord Keith of Avonholm,Lord Somervell of Harrow |
| Judgment Date | 08 March 1956 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1956] UKHL J0308-1 |
| Docket Number | No. 4. |
| Court | House of Lords |
| Date | 08 March 1956 |
[1956] UKHL J0308-1
House of Lords
Viscount Simonds
Lord Reid
Lord Tucker
Lord Keith of Avonholm
Lord Somervell of Harrow
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Grant against the National Coal Board, that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Thursday the 26th as on Monday the 30th days of January last, upon the Petition and Appeal of George Grant, 2 Mid Row, Cardenden, Fife, 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 Second Division of the 24th of March 1955, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Interlocutor might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of the National Coal Board, lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Interlocutor of the 24th day of March 1955, complained of in the said Appeal, be and the same is hereby, Recalled, and that the Interlocutor of the Sheriff Substitute of the 13th day of December 1954 be, and the same is hereby, Restored: And it is further Ordered, That the said Cause be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to the Court of Session in Scotland to proceed as accords: And it is further Ordered, That the Respondents do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Appellant the Costs of the Action in the Court of Session and also the Costs incurred by him in respect of the said Appeal to this House, the amount of such last-mentioned Costs 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 Court of Session in Scotland, or the Judge acting as Vacation Judge, shall issue such summary process or diligence for the recovery of such Costs as shall be lawful and necessary.
My Lords,
This appeal from an Interlocutor of the Second Division of the Court of Session, which recalled an Interlocutor of the Sheriff-Substitute of Fife and Kinross, raises a question of some importance which has not, I think, previously come before the Court.
The Appellant is a mineworker in the employment of the Respondents at their Minto Colliery, Lochgelly, Fife, and in this action claims damages for injuries received by him in an accident which occurred in the course of his employment in the early morning of the 1st June, 1953.
The admitted facts are that the Appellant with another man was extending a conveyor belt in the underground workings of the colliery, and on completing his work at about 6 o'clock a.m. proceeded to make his way out of the workings; that in order to reach the surface he required to travel on the man haulage in the Bogie Dook in the colliery, and that along with another man he sat in one of the empty man haulage bogies and that the bogie started to travel up the Dook, that after travelling some distance up the Dook the bogie in which he was sitting ran over some redd or stone which had fallen from the roof of the Dook and the bogie was derailed and the Appellant was flung out of it and sustained injury. Nothing else was proved or admitted. It is a matter of conjecture when the redd or stone fell, what was its bulk, and whether it had been shifted since its fall. The Appellant is content to rest his case on the undoubted fact that there was at some time such a fall and therefore at some time the roof of the Dook was not secure. He relies, therefore, on section 49 of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, claiming that the Respondents have been guilty of a breach of their statutory duty and that he has suffered damage by that breach.
Section 49 is in these terms:
"The roof and sides of every travelling road and working place shall be made secure, and a person shall not, unless appointed for the purpose of exploring or repairing, travel on or work in any travelling road or working place which is not so made secure".
It will be noticed that this is an absolute obligation: it is not qualified, as a statutory obligation sometimes is, by such words as "so far as possible". It is, moreover, a provision which has long found a place in legislation relating to mines, and naturally so; for the danger to mineworkers of a fall from roof or sides has long been known and anxiously guarded against.
The Appellant's case, then, is simple enough: a breach, a fall of stone, ensuing injury.
My Lords, where damages are claimed for breach of a statutory duty without any allegation of negligence, the pursuer must establish two things, first that the breach is intended not only to be visited by a penalty but also to be the ground of civil liability to a class of persons of whom the pursuer is one, and, secondly, that the injury was one against which the legislation was designed to protect him. The first of these tests is undoubtedly satisfied in this case. No one questions that a civil action for damages can be founded on a breach of section 49. It is at the second test that in my opinion a real difficulty arises, in which I am not prepared to differ from your Lordships though I have been much pressed by the cogent arguments to be found in the judgments under appeal.
The principle here invoked is to be found in Gorris v. Scott L.R. 9 Ex. 125. It is accurately stated in the first paragraph of the headnote:
"When a statute creates a duty with the object of preventing a mischief of a particular kind, a person who, by reason of another's neglect of the statutory duty, suffers a loss of a different kind, is not entitled to maintain an action in respect of such loss".
The defendant in that case had neglected to comply with a certain Order made by the Privy Council under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1869. The Act was passed, as appeared from the preamble and elsewhere, in order to prevent the introduction and spread of contagious and infectious diseases amongst animals; the defendant ignored an Order containing provisions designed to this end, under which any ship bringing sheep or cattle from any foreign port to ports in Great Britain was required to have the place occupied by such animals divided into pens of certain dimensions and the floor of the pens furnished with battens or footholds. As Kelly, C.B., pointed out, the object of the Order was to prevent animals from being overcrowded and so brought into a condition in which the disease guarded against would be likely to be developed. As a result of the neglect of the Order the plaintiff suffered the loss of a number of sheep which were carried on the ship, not, however, because they contracted a contagious disease but because they were washed overboard: it was assumed that, had the Order been complied with, they would not have been washed overboard. As I have already said, the plaintiff was held to be not entitled to recover. "The Act of Parliament", said Pollock, B., "was passed alio intuitu … Suppose, then, that the precautions directed are useful and advantageous for preventing animals from being washed overboard, yet they were never intended for that purpose, and a loss of that kind caused by their neglect cannot give a cause of action". In that case, as in the case under appeal, the plaintiff did not rely on negligence at common law but rested his case solely on a breach of statutory duty.
My Lords, the principle thus stated in Gorris v. Scott more than eighty years ago has not, so far as I know, been questioned. The problem is whether it is applicable to this case. In Gorris v. Scott it was, no doubt, easy to limit the scope of the enactment by reference to the preamble. In other cases, such as Nicholls v. F. Austin (Leyton) Ltd. [1946] A.C. 493, somewhat different considerations arose. In that case the question was whether there had been an infringement of section 14 of the Factories Act, 1937, which provides that "Every dangerous part of any machinery … shall be securely fenced". Upon the generality of the words it was argued that the section imposed a duty to guard not only against contact with dangerous machinery but also against dangerous materials being ejected from it. A different conclusion was reached by this House upon a consideration of the context of the section: it was held that the obligation to fence a dangerous machine was satisfied if the dangerous part was so screened as to prevent the body of the operator from coming into contact with it. The only assistance, I think, to be derived from this class of case is that they confirm that the measure of statutory obligation is to be ascertained from the context in which it is found.
I turn again to section 49 of the Coal Mines Act. More narrowly, the question, as I see it, is whether it is to be ascertained from its words in their context that the object is to secure the safety of the miners generally or only to protect them from a particular danger, i.e., being crushed or hurt by a fall. It was, I think, conceded that this was the primary danger, but it was urged that a fall which cut off the workmen from their exit was a danger no less to be apprehended and no less to be prevented by keeping the roof secure. From that it is a short step to saying that the safety of the workman depends also on the roads being kept clear of debris from the roof or sides; for, if they are not, there must be a risk of derailment. The Respondents relied on the fact that section 47 (a new section which was...
To continue reading
Request your trial
- Malayan United Industrial Company Ltd; Wong Soon San
-
McGovern v British Steel Corporation
...intended to be given by the regulation. He relied upon the principle derived from Gorris v. Scott [1874] L.R. 9 Ex 125 and Grant v. National Coal Board [1956] A.C. 649 that an action for breach of statutory duty will fail if the damage done is not the kind of harm which the statute is desig......
-
Kilgollan v William Cooke & Company Ltd
...the argument. I think, again, that this Court la bound by the words of Lord Simonds in ( Grant v. National Coal Board 1956, 2 Weekly Law Reports, page 752, at page 754). The words to which I refer are: "My Lords, where damages are claimed for breech of a statutory duty without any allegatio......
-
McFarlane v Wilkinson and Another ; Hegarty v E E Caledonia Ltd
...right in those persons who may be injured by its contravention." 30 Forty years later Lord Reid said in Grant v. National Coal Board [1956] A.C. 649 at pp 662-3: "The duty must, I think, be to those who ought reasonably to have been in contemplation as likely to be injured as a result of th......