Widow's Compensation For Railway Death

Press, Volume C, Issue 29516, 18 May 1961, Page 10

Widow's Compensation For Railway Death

(X.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SYDNEY, May 16.

A railwayman’s fatal act in going to sleep with his head on a railway line during his lunch hour did not bar his widow from worker’s compensation, the Supreme Court in Sydney ruled today. The Bench unanimously rejected an appeal by the railway commissioners that the man’s action amounted to a break in the course of his employment. The appeal was against an award of £A2750 for Veronic Carmelita Collins, of Fairfield, Sydney. Her husband, Stanley Herbert Collins, aged 50, a rail adjuster, was killed in December, 1957, when he was run over by a parcel van near Rhodes, a suburban station. Judgment was given by the Chief Justice (Mr Justice Evatt), Mr Justice Herron, and Mr Justice Collins. They said that Collins and

another railwayman ate their lunch and then lay across a relief line on which trains ran from time to time. Collins had gone to sleep after placing his head on one of the rails, and was killed four minutes before the luncheon recess ended.

The Workers’ Compensation Commission, they said, had rejected a submission that Collins had gone to sleep on the line in a sense of complete bravado and irresponsibility.

The commission also had said that it was impossible to find that Collins had deliberately and recklessly done so in the knowledge that a train was possibly due shortly. His act was a breach of the safety rules and regulations, the Judges added. However, a negligent or rash manner of taking a rest did not establish that the course of employment was broken.