Shotts Iron Company Ltd v Fordyce
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | The Lord Chancellor,Viscount Dunedin,Lord Buckmaster,Lord Thankerton,Lord Macmillan,. |
| Judgment Date | 04 April 1930 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1930] UKHL J0404-4 |
| Docket Number | No. 6. |
| Court | House of Lords |
| Date | 04 April 1930 |
[1930] UKHL J0404-4
House of Lords
Lord Chancellor.
Viscount Dunedin.
Lord Buckmaster.
Lord Thankerton.
Lord Macmillan.
After hearing Counsel for the Appellants, on Monday the 24th day of March last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Shotts Iron Company, Limited, Hyndshaw Colliery, Carluke, 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 19th of July, 1929, 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 Thomas Fordyce, 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 19th day of July, 1929, 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 Lord Ordinary officiating on the Bills during the Vacation, 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 a judgment of the Second Division of the Court of Session in Scotland, pronounced upon an Appeal at the instance of the present Respondent by way of a Stated Case under the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1925.
The case was heard and proof led before the Sheriff-Substitute as Arbitrator, when the following facts were established; namely:—
(1) On 2nd April, 1924, the Appellant, while working as a drawer with the Respondents, racked and injured the muscles of his back in assisting to replace a derailed hutch of coal.
(2) The same day he reported his injury to the fireman a proper official of the Respondents to receive such notice.
(3) The fireman, considering the injury trivial, did not report it to the under-manager of the colliery.
(4) The Appellant (with the exception of a fortnight from 16th September, 1927, when he remained off work for medical treatment at his home) continued in the employment of the Respondents at his usual occupation, and earning full wages, until 15th March, 1928, when he left their employment to undergo medical treatment for trouble arising from his said injury.
(5) He became a patient of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, where, besides other treatment, he underwent, in October, 1928, an operation on the lower part of his spine.
(6) He suffers from muscular rheumatism in the lower part of his back and attendant sciatica in his legs, and such trouble is due to the effects of his said injury.
(7) He was wholly incapacitated for work from 15th March, 1928, until 21st January, 1929, and since then he has been fit for light work.
(8) The Appellant made no claim for compensation within the statutory period.
(9) The Appellant throughout all material times suffered considerable pain and discomfort and all along from the date of his accident he and his medical adviser associated his trouble with his injury.
(10) He did not intend to claim compensation so long as he was able to earn his full wages in the employment of the Respondents.
(11) He claimed compensation in or about October, 1928.
(12) The Respondents had no knowledge, actual or imputed, of the intention of the Appellant to make a claim for compensation against them prior to October. 1928.
The Sheriff found in law that (1) the said injury to the Appellant was the result of an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment with the Respondents; (2) his failure to claim compensation timeously was without reasonable cause; and (3) he was accordingly barred from recovering compensation. The Sheriff therefore refused to award compensation, and found no expenses due to or by either party.
"Proceedings for the recovery under this Act of compensation for an injury shall not be maintainable unless notice of the accident has been given as soon as practicable after the happening thereof and before the workman has voluntarily left the employment in which he was injured, and unless the claim for compensation with respect to such accident has been made within six months from the occurrence of the accident causing the injury, or, in case of death, within six months from the time of death:
Provided that—
( a) the want of or any defect or inaccuracy in such notice shall not be a bar to the maintenance of such proceedings if the employer is proved to have had knowledge of the accident from any other source at or about the time of the accident, or if it is found in the proceedings for settling the claim that the employer is not, or would not, if a notice or an amended notice were then given and the hearing postponed, be prejudiced in his defence by the want, defect, or inaccuracy, or that such want, defect or inaccuracy was occasioned by mistake, absence from the United Kingdom, or other reasonable cause; and
( b) the failure to make a claim within the period above specified shall not be a bar to the maintenance of such proceedings if it is found that the failure was occasioned by mistake, absence from the United Kingdom, or other reasonable cause."
The second division of the Court of Session (The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Ormidale, and Lord Anderson—Lord Hunter dissentiente) held that the failure of the workman to make a claim within the said period of six months was occasioned by mistake or other reasonable cause.
On the Appeal from that Judgment to this House it was first argued on behalf of the employers that an Appeal was not competent because the question was one of fact and there was evidence which justified the finding of the Sheriff Substitute.
With this contention I am unable to agree. As Lord Parmoor said in King v. Port of London Authority, (1920) A.C. 1, at p. 31,
"No doubt the relevant facts should be found by the learned judge, and then it becomes a question of law whether these facts are such as to constitute a reasonable-cause within the provision of the statute."
That decision was followed by the English Court of Appeal in Hillman v. L. B. & S. C. R. Company, (1920) 1 K. B., p. 284, where Lord Warrington said—
"The facts are sufficiently found by the judgment of the County Court Judge, and are not in dispute. It is now open to us if we think that the County Court Judge has from these facts drawn the wrong conclusion in law to reverse his decision."
In my view, the question whether the facts as found amount to reasonable cause is one of law.
Once again I should like to protest against the great number of cases which are so often cited upon this Act. I prefer to go back if possible to the words of the statute and not to consider such words through a vista of decisions, most of which deal with the facts in the particular case under consideration. I entirely agree with what was said by the Lord Justice Clerk in this case:—
"One would have thought that the question whether reasonable cause existed for abstaining from making a claim under any set of circumstances presented prima facie a simple problem for solution; that, however, is not so, and the problem is, if I may say so, rather obscured than illumined by the amount of case law by which it is surrounded, if not submerged."
As, however, we were pressed to consider several of these cases, I will refer to them for the purpose of distinguishing them from the present one.
One fact stands out above all others in the present case, and that is that the workman here worked for four years after the accident—that is from the 2nd April, 1924, till the 15th March, 1928, at his usual occupation, that of a drawer, and was earning full wages for full work. In Webster v....
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