SUPREME COURT Counsel Address Jury In £6000 Damages Claim

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30899, 4 November 1965, Page 11

SUPREME COURT Counsel Address Jury In £6000 Damages Claim

Blame for the accident to Norman Mowbray Snowdon, a foreman painter, who fell from an exterior staircase at the university engineering school at Ham on June 6, 1961, lay equally on John Calder, Ltd., the contractor for the job, and Flewellen and Lipscombe, Ltd., one of its sub-contractors, it was submitted in the Supreme Court yesterday.

“You may think 5050 is not far wrong,” said Snowdon’s counsel, Mr B. A. Barrer. in winding up his £6OOO claim for damages to the jury yesterday afternoon.

Mr Justice Macarihur yesterday morning discharged A F. Burden, Ltd., painting contractors, from the action, after argument on the issues to be put to the jury, and granted leave to its counsel, Messrs R P. Thompson and C. B. Atkinson, to withdraw. His Honour will sum up the six-day case to the jury this morning, after which it will retire to consider the series of issues put to it, on the agreement of counsel. Mr Young’s Address In addressing the jury on behalf at John Calder. Ltd., Mr R. A. Young said that the engineering school had been a vast construction undertaking, with work going on over a wide area. “When a building is in the course of construction, no worker on it is entitled to assume, as a matter of course, that an; part is complete," said Mr Young. “If he makes use of such a part, it is for him, on his own inspection, to ensure for himself the completion and fitness of that part of the building for the use which he intends to make of it." In that respect, Snowdon had failed to ascertain that the staircase railing was not securely fixed. The responsibility for ensuring proper welding of the railing fell “fairly and squarely” on Flewellen and Lipscombe, Ltd., said Mr

voting. It had taken refuge in the instructions for the grinding off of the welds — but that, he submitted, was no defence. It was crystal clear that there was bad welding.

“If the welding at the stanchion end of the rail which gave way had been sound, would it have made the slightest difference whether the flange end of the rail had been screw-fixed or not?” said Mr Young. But the screw-fixing did not really matter, submitted Mr Young, because the time for the affixing of the screws had not arrived. There was still further work to be done on the railing. Mr Blunt’s Address

Mr R. G. Blunt, for Flewellyn and Lipscombe, Ltd., examined the liabilities of the welder, the foreman carpenter, and Snowdon himself in relation to work on the staircase.

The welding, said Blunt, had only to be sufficiently strong to take the strain for which it was designed—there was no duty to Snowdon to make it strong enough to bear his weight with one end of the railing unfixed. Mr Blunt spoke of “the wily Fox”—the foreman carpenter for John Calder, Ltd.—who had “an unusual memory.” Fox, said Mr Blunt, could not remember what his firm's manager, Mr Miles, claimed to have heard from him in preliminary inquiries—nor could he remember Mr Ellis, the foreman welder for Flewellen and Lipscombe, Ltd., telling him that the staircase railing was ready for screw-fixing. And Fox had not seen to it—in spite of two notices—that the railing was I nailed or screwed to the door

post at the staircase head. If the rail which gave way had been screwed up, Snowdon’s accident would never have happened, submitted Mr Blunt. But the screw-fixing was not Flewellen and Lipscombe’s job. Snowdon himself, as a foreman painter had not looked to his own safety. Address For Plaintiff Mr Barrer, in his address to the jury, submitted that John Calder, Ltd. and Flewellen and Lipscombe, Ltd., were equally to blame for the accident. “But we have had them casting about for the catch to blame each other,” Mr Barrer said. “Calder’s said it was the welding, and Flewellen and Lipscombe said it was the nonscrewing of the rails.” “They blame Mr Snowdon for not taking care of himself —after the welders had set, as it were, a trap for him,” Mr Barrer said. “And what about the two complaints made to Mr Fox, about the stairway?” said Mr Barrer. Fox, the foreman carpenter and safety officer for John Calder, Ltd., had known about the unsecured railing at the end of March, submitted Mr Barrer but he had done nothing about it. “You may think that is pretty poor behaviour on the part of a safety officer,” Mr Barrer said. “Yet he had the temerity to come here and say that Snowdon should have done it.” Mr Barrer described Snowdon’s claim for £6OOO damages as a modest one, and suggested the jury should have no difficulty in awarding him that sum. At this stage, the hearing was adjourned for His Honour’s summing-up.