RIDING A JIGGER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 62, 14 March 1930, Page 8

RIDING A JIGGER.

EMPLOYER NOT LIABLE.

FOE WORKMAN'S INJURY.

INTERESTING LEGAL POINT,

Some very pretty legal arguments have centred round claims for compensation by injured workmen. "Was he injured in the course of hie employment" is not such a simple question as it looks. A particularly interesting case is decided in a judgment delivered yesterday by Mr. Justice Frazer, president of the Arbitration Court, who held that a workman on the Huia dam job was not entitled to claim compensation from the Auckland City Council.

Plaintiff was pharles James Flowerday, labourer, of Onehunga, and the defendant was the City Council. Flowerday was a platelayer on a line running between Huia dam and a quarry above the dam. Plaintiff lived at the construction camp near the dam. The men who lived off the waterworks reserve used to travel to and from their work On the corporation's locomotive or on a jigger owned by one of the men, who ■had permission to run it on the tramline. Plaintiff tad been spending a week-end at Huia Bay, and was returning on the jigger, with a number of other workers, to the construction camp on the morning of August 5, 1929. The jigger was derailed, through striking a boulder that had fallen on to the line.

Mr. Tjuck, for plaintiff, argued that plaintiff was not only on his employer's property, but was- actually on. his way to his work.

Mr. Johnstone, for the defendant corporation, argued that as the plaintiff had left the camp for his own purposes, and' would not have been under, the control of the corporation until it was time for him to. resume duty, the accident arose neither out of nor in the course of ■his employment. His Honor said it was not a term of plaintiff's contract of employment that he should make use of a jigger in order to go to,his work. The fact that his temporary home was on the reserve, near the scene of his work, would have the effect of suspending his employment from the time that he left the vicinity of his work in the afternoon until he reached it again in the morning." Judgment was given for the defendant corporation and leave was reserved to •it to auuly for coats.