EMPLOYERS AND AIR RAIDS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 194, 6 May 1918, Page 6

EMPLOYERS AND AIR RAIDS

LIABILITY FOE SPECIAL RISKS. Two- cases raising the ijiiestion of employers' liability to pay compensation lor deaths of workmen lulled in air raids were heard at a Loudon county court recently. In the first case Alice Lavina Bird claimed .£156 for the loss of her husband, a messenger f.nd porter, who died from suffocation after a bomb had started a lire in a building to which his employer hd sent him. ' Judge Koberts said 1 that death through a bomb dropped from enemy aircraft was not sufficient for the daim to succeed. Thero must be a special risk arising from a peril attached to the particular place in which, by the obligation of his servioj, tho dead man was placed. Tho warehouse to which ho was sent ran no further risk of attack than any other building in the district, but owing to the inllammable nature of the contents the risk of injury by tire was a special risk, greater than that to whicli other ptrsons ;n other buildings or in the street were exposed. The applicant would be awarded J3ISG , In the second'case, Catherine luryveth claimed compensation r.gainst a firm of printers by whom her husband .was employed as traveller and collector. On June 13, while in the street on their business, ho was killed by a. bomb. Payments up to .£4.0 had been made. The Judge held that the man's duty entailed.no further or other risk than applied to all other persons m the street. There was no question of a risk specially attaching to a locality. Under the statute under which the .claim was mode a person walking long the street in the ordinary course of his duty who slips on a piece of orange or banana skin or on a greasv spot and injures i imself is entitled to recover accident compensation, while a person who is injured by a bvnb while walking in the street is not entitled to any. The verdict was for the employers and no award was made. The Judge mentioned that the Government Committee on Air i?aid Risks had intimated that compensation could not be paid for deaths thiough ;.ccidents caused ill the way mentioned in (he case. It would in their opinion tend to relieve the employers or insurance offices of •their responsibilities if they were liable for compensation.