Staveley Iron and Chemical Company Ltd v Jones
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Morton of Henryton,Lord Porter,Lord Reid,Lord Tucker,Lord Cohen |
| Judgment Date | 31 January 1956 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1956] UKHL J0131-1 |
| Date | 31 January 1956 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1956] UKHL J0131-1
Lord Morton of Henryton
Lord Porter
Lord Reid
Lord Tucker
Lord Cohen
House of Lords
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Staveley Iron and Chemical Company Limited against Jones, that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Tuesday the 29th and Wednesday the 30th, days of November last, as on Thursday the 1st and Monday the 5th, days of December last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Staveley Iron and Chemical Company Limited, of Staveley, in the County of Derby, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal of the 8th of December 1954, so far as therein stated to be appealed against, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order, so far as aforesaid, might be reversed, varied or altered, and that the Petitioners might have the relief prayed for in the Appeal, or 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 Robert Jones, 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 Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal, of the 8th day of December 1954, in part 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.
My Lords,
The Respondent was injured in an accident which occurred in the Appellant company's works at Hollingwood in the county of Derby. A pan laden with heavy cores, which was being lifted by an overhead travelling crane, swung outwards and the Respondent's arm was trapped between the pan and a railway wagon. Both the Respondent and the crane-driver were employed by the Appellant company.
The appeal raises two questions of fact—
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(1) Was the crane driver negligent?
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(2) If so, was the Respondent guilty of contributory negligence?
I have had the advantage of reading in print the speech prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Tucker, which deals fully with these questions of fact and also with questions as to the standard of care to be applied in the circumstances of the present case. I entirely agree with this speech, but I think I ought to add a few words on two passages in the judgments below which were discussed very fully in the course of the argument.
Sellers, J., began his judgment as follows: —
"This is a claim in respect of an accident occurring in a factory or shop, and it is one of a character which is common in the Courts now but which could not have been maintained successfully prior to the Act which removed the defence to employers of common employment" i.e. the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act, 1948.
It is a type of action which seems to be increasingly entertained in the Courts at the present time. To my mind it does give rise to a serious question as to whether these acts of carelessness, or inadvertence, which arise in factories in the course of work where people are collaborating together and working in a team should be described, except in exceptional circumstances where the conduct is so excessively bad as to require the description, as acts of negligence or errors of judgment."
My Lords, this passage is open to the interpretation that, in deciding the question "negligence or no negligence", the Court should apply an especially lenient standard of conduct in a case where workmen are collaborating together and working in a team. If the passage does bear that meaning, I cannot agree with it, and no authority was cited to the House which supports it. The crane driver was bound, in accordance with well-established principles, to use that degree of care which an ordinary, prudent crane-driver would have used in the circumstances. As to the case of the injured Respondent who was charged with contributory negligence, I desire to add nothing to the observations of my noble and learned friend Lord Tucker.
A second passage with which I cannot wholly agree occurs in the judgment of Lord Justice Denning. In dealing with the question whether the crane driver was negligent the learned Lord Justice said:
"He" (i.e. the employer) "acts by his servant; and his servant's acts are for this purpose to be considered as his acts. Qui facit per per alium facit per se. He cannot escape by the plea that his servant was thoughtless or inadvertent or made an error of judgment. If he takes the benefit of a machine like this, he must accept the burden of seeing that it is properly handled."
The learned Lord Justice then proceeded:
"It is for this reason that the employer's responsibility for injury may be ranked greater than that of the servant who actually made the mistake, see Jones v. Manchester Corporation (1952) 2 K.B. 852: and he remains responsible even though the servant may for some reason be immune, see Broom v. Morgan [1953] 1 Q.B. 597. A good illustration, as Mr. Beney pointed out, is Stapley v. Gypsum Mines, Ltd. [1953] A.C. 663 where the widow of the dead man Stapley succeeded against his employer, though she would no doubt have failed against his fellow workman Dale, because of their joint employment."
My Lords, what the Court has to decide in the present case is—Was the crane driver negligent? If the answer is "Yes", the employer is liable vicariously for the negligence of his servant. If the answer is "No", the employer is surely under no liability at all. Cases such as this, where an employer's liability is vicarious, are wholly distinct from cases where an employer is under a personal liability to carry out a duty imposed upon him as an employer by common law or statute. In the latter type of case the employer cannot discharge himself by saying "I delegated the carrying out of this duty to a servant, and he failed to carry it out by a mistake or error of judgment not amounting to negligence". To such a case one may well apply the words of Denning, L.J.—
"The employer remains responsible even though the servant may for some reason be immune".
These words, however, are, in my view, incorrect as applied to a case where the liability of the employer is not personal but vicarious. In such a case if the servant is "immune", so is the employer. See, for instance, Esso Petroleum Co. Ltd. v. Southport Corporation [1955] 3.All E.R. 864. This passage in the judgment of Denning, L.J., receives no support in the judgments of Hodson and Romer, L.JJ., and I cannot find that the decisions in the cases cited by Denning, L.J., lend any support to it, though it may be that the passage is to some extent supported by certain dicta in the first two of these cases.
Although I have felt bound to express my dissent from this passage in the judgment of Denning, L.J., I am glad to find myself in agreement with the views expressed by him and by his colleagues that the crane driver was negligent, and that contributory negligence is not proved against the Respondent.
I would dismiss the appeal.
My Lords,
I have had the opportunity of reading in print the opinions of my noble and learned friends. Lord Morton of Henryton and Lord Tucker, and find myself in agreement with the views expressed by them, and concur in the result.
My Lords,
The injured man Jones was in charge of a tray or pan full of cores which was to be moved by an overhead crane to a different part of the works. The crane moves on overhead girders and there is suspended from it a large hook or crab from which four chains hang. The pan had to be lifted by attaching one of these chains at each corner. Two men are required to do this and Jones had brought another man, Groves, to help him. Apparently the crane driver, Miss Howett, saw that the load was ready and she brought her crane to a position where the crab was over the pan, and without waiting for any signal she appears to have lowered the crab so that the chains were within reach of the two men on the ground. For safe working the crab must be centred over the load; otherwise, when the load is lifted it will swing, as it did in this case. The evidence shows that the crane driver is not in a good position to see that the crab is centred and that the man in charge on the ground is supposed to see to this, but there is no evidence to show just what Jones, the man in charge, ought to have done. He was standing at the side of the pan, a position from which it would not seem easy to see whether the crab and chains were too near his side or too near the other side of the pan. Jones was not asked whether at this stage he looked to see if the crab was properly centred, and there was no evidence whether it would have been sufficient for him to look from that point or whether he should have moved out to some other point where he would have had a better view. He and Groves each took two of the hanging chains and fastened them at the corners of the pan. Again, there is no evidence as to whether Jones had a duty or an adequate opportunity at that stage to look to the centreing of the crab: but as he had to hold one chain in place with each hand until the crane took the weight he would not seem then to have had a good opportunity to check the centreing.
The occurrence of the accident shows that the crab must have been considerably off centre and nearer to Jones' side of the pan and that...
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