Smith v Chesterfield and District Co-operative Society Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE,LORD JUSTICE JENKINS,LORD JUSTICE MORRIS |
| Judgment Date | 29 January 1953 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1953] EWCA Civ J0129-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Date | 29 January 1953 |
[1953] EWCA Civ J0129-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Goddard)
Lord Justice Jenkins
and
Lord Justice Morris
MR H.B.H. HYLTON-FOSTER, Q.C., and MR R. W. SYKES (instructed by Mr George A. Herbert, agent for Messrs Wiley Hargrave & Co., Leeds) appeared on behalf of the Appellant (Plaintiff).
MR TRISTRAN BERSTFORD, Q. C., and MR S. SEUFFERT (instructed by Mr F. Hollis) appeared on behalf of the Respondents (Defendants).
This is an appeal from a Judgment of Mr Justice Oliver in a case in which the Plaintiff sought to recover damages for injury to her hand caused by an alleged breach of statutory duty. The girl was employed at a bakery. She was employed on a rolling machine which rolled puff pastry. Apparently the way in which the puffpastry is made is this: there is a layer of dough, then a layer ofmargarine, and then another layer of dough, and that may go on, as far as I can understand, ad infinitum, but in practice, of course, it does not: in practice it makes a lump of dough somewhere about three inches thick. The Plaintiff's duty is to manipulate the lump in this way: she first of all has to roll it or beat it with a hand roller, and then as it is very heavy it goes through a mechanical roller. There are two rollers: the bottom roller is fixed; the top roller will move slightly up and down, according, I suppose, to the thickness of the bed of dough which is being put through. When it comes to the end of the bed of dough which is going through it generally happens, apparently, that some little pieces are left over which have not been nipped by the rollers so as to be drawn in and rolled, and they have come off because they are just at the end, and the girl's duty then is to stop the machine, collect these small pieces of dough which are left, put them again into a lump, then roll them, this time with a hand roller, and then put them on the bed of dough to go through a second time – that is to say, when the dough is coming back through the machine, in the reverse order to that in which it has gone through in the first instance.
These rollers have got a guard over them: there is no question about that. There is a guard, photographs of which we have seen. That guard comes down, and there is a space beneath it of something over three inches between that and the bed of the machine, so that it would easily take a bed of dough of three inches. The object of the guard, of course, is to prevent the operator's fingers coming into contact with the rollers. Apparently the operators who work these machines are given special directions and training upon them; and one thing they are forbidden to do is to put small pieces of dough, when they have collected them, back into the machine for rolling but to roll them with a rolling pin. The reason for that is, apparently, that these small bits areapt to miss the nip of the rollers and, therefore, get left behind and not carried through the rollers. Of course, if they have to be pushed up tight against the rollers when the rollers are working so as to obviate the loss of nip, there is a danger that the fingers may come into contact with the rollers. There is no question about it that a careless or thoughtless operator can put his or her hand underneath the guard and come in contact with the rollers; and that in what happened to this girl. She had been instructed that she was not to put her hand under this guard, but she did put her hand under the guard, and it was perfectly easy to get her hand under the guard. She could get her hand under the guard, and having got her hand under the guard there were about nine inches before it touched the roller. She had stopped the machine, she had collected the bits of dough, and because it was rather heavy work to roll them out again she put them back, put the guard down, and put her hand under the guard to push the dough up against the roller: the machine was working, and in so doing her fingers were cut and she was injured.
It has been said over and over again – ever since, I suppose, there were Factories Acts – that the provisions of the Factories Acts with regard to fencing are not meant to apply only to preventing accidents to careful workmen. It is recognised that in workshops and factories people are not always careful: they are very often thoughtless, and sometimes they do things deliberately which they ought not to do which land them in very serious injury.
I need not go through all the cases which have laid down that fencing is intended to protect the careless and the ignorant as well as the careful and the well-instructed, because in the recent case of ( Burns v. Joseph Terry & Sons Limited 1951, 1 King's Bench, page 454) Lord Justice Somervell in his Judgment cited a passage from the LordPresident's Judgment in Lyon v. Don Brothers, Buist & Co. Ltd., which is reported in 1944 Session Cases, at page 1, and I will just read one passage from Lord Normand's Judgment. He said: "It can be appositely said that the standard to be observed is a fence which will prevent accidents from occurring in circumstances which may be reasonably anticipated, but the circumstances which may be...
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Desnoes and Geddes Ltd v Garry Stewart
...leading to amputation of four fingers of her right hand. 22 In Pitters (supra) the court considered- the case of Smith v Chesterfield & District Co-operative Society Limited [1953] 1 ALL E.R. 447, where the court held the Plaintiff 40 percent to blame because she had done a deliberate act ......
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Ehoan Green v The Captain's Bakery Ltd
...be securely fenced. Indeed, the same was decided in respect of a similar machine which was used to roll out puff pastry, in the case: Smith v Chesterfield and District Co-operative Society Ltd– [1953] 1 ALL ER 447. 20 Acting not only on the weight of those authorities, but also, on the car......
- Anthony Skeete v Electroplaters Ltd
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Garth Burton v Jamaica Biscuit Company Ltd
...court has to consider whether Mr. Burton's act of non-compliance is "a risky thing" in disobedience of orders (See Smith v Chesterfield & District Co-operative Society Ltd 1953 1 ALL ER 447; Desnoes & Geddes Ltd v Gary Stewart SCCA No. 74/2002 ). 33 The evidence is that there has to be som......