Murray v Fife Coal Company
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 07 December 1923 |
| Date | 07 December 1923 |
| Docket Number | No. 13. |
| Court | Court of Session |
Lord President (Clyde), Lord Cullen, Lord Sands.
Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906 (6 Edw. VII. cap. 58), sec. 1 (1)Out of and in the course of the employmentBreach of prohibition made by employers for safety of workmenProhibition against guiding hutches down slope otherwise than from sideWorkman guiding hutches while walking between rails.
A workman in a mine, part of whose duties it was to act as hanger-on in controlling hutches in their descent down a sloping road, had been verbally prohibited by his employers from guiding them otherwise than from the side. In breach of this prohibition he attempted to guide a rake of hutches by walking in front of them, and received injuries from which he died.
Held that the workman's breach of the prohibition did not take him outside the sphere of his employment, and that compensation to his dependants fell to be awarded.
Estler Brothers v. PhillipsUNKUNKUNK, (1922) 91 L. J., K. B. 470, 127 L. T. 73, 15 B. W. C. C. 291, followed.
Donnelly v. Moore & Co., 1921 S. C. (H. L.) 41, [1921] 1 A. C. 329, distinguished.
In an arbitration under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, in the Sheriff Court of Fife and Kinross at Kirkcaldy, in which Mrs Jane M'Lean Braid or Laurence or Murray, mother of the deceased William Laurence, miner, and Marion Wallace Laurence, her minor child, claimed compensation from the Fife Coal Co., Limited, in respect of the death of the said William Laurence by accident while in the course of his employment with them in their Wellsgreen Colliery, the Sheriff-substitute (Stuart) refused compensation, and at the request of the applicants stated a case for appeal.
The case set forth that the following facts were admitted or prove:(1) That the deceased William Laurence was on 29th November 1922 in the employment of the respondents as a hanger-on at the Wellsgreen Colliery belonging to them. (3) That deceased's duties were to assist another lad with the pushing of empty hutches up an incline about 54 feet long to the foot of a heading, and with the taking of full hutches from the foot of said heading down said incline, the gradient being about 1 in 26 in favour of the loaded hutch. (4) That the deceased was instructed in taking the full hutches down said incline to guide them from the side or the back, and in particular had been forbidden by the officials above mentioned* to do so by going in front of them between the rails. (5) That on said 29th November 1922 the deceased was proceeding to let down a rake of three full hutches and he did so by walking in front of the rake of hutches and backwards between the rails. (6) That the said hutches which deceased was guiding collided with a stationary rake of hutches, which had been previously brought down, and the deceased was crushed between them, sustaining injuries from which he died. (7) That on the morning of the accident and prior to the happening thereof the deceased was found by the said Frank Dickson, oversman, guiding hutches by walking between the rails, and was severely reprimanded by Dickson for breach of said orders. (8) That the deceased stated to his companion, who came to his assistance, that he thought the hutches he was guiding were the first three that had come down.
The Sheriff-substitute further stated that he found that the said accident did not arise out of and in the course of the deceased's employment, and that the respondents were not liable in compensation to the claimants therefor.
The question of law for the opinion of the Court was:Was there evidence on which I was entitled to find that the death of William Laurence did not result from personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment?
The case was heard before the First Division (without Lord Skerrington) on 7th December 1923.
Argued for the appellants;The distinction laid down by Lord Dunedin in Plumb v. Cobden Flour Mills Co.ELR1 between prohibitions which limited the sphere of employment, and prohibitions which only dealt with conduct within the sphere of employment, still held good. The prohibition in the present case related solely to the manner in which the workman was to do his work, and was so expressed in the arbitrator's 5th finding. Accordingly, the case fell under the chain of authority starting from Mawdsley v. West Leigh Colliery Co.UNK,2 which had been followed in Blair & Co. v. ChiltonUNKUNK,3 and had been approved by the House of Lords in...
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