LEGAL "ACCIDENTS"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 17, 21 July 1928, Page 17

LEGAL "ACCIDENTS"

CURIOUS INSTANCES BOY AND PASSING TRAIN COMPENSATION CLAIMS The Basingstoke to Waterloo express was rushing along at fifty miles an hour, and had nearly' reached the Merton Road Bridge. On tho bridge stood a boy watching with keen excitement the approach of the train, and in his hand was a stone which he would drop down tho funnel Of tho engine as it passed under the. bridge—a temptation which no mischievous youngster could resist. Up came tho engine and down went the stone, but instead of falling .into the funnel of tho.engine it hit the "eye-glass." of ..the cab and smashed the glass. .A. splinter ' entered, the eye of tho engine-driver, and so seriously injured him that a few months later he died." There followed a claim by his widow against his employers, tho London and South-Western Railway Company, for compensation under the Workers' Compensation Act. She could not succeed unless the injury which had realised her husband-death had arisen' Iby accident. How could it be an accident? Was it not the wilful act of the boy, this dropping of tho stone? The County' Court Judge,;.who,: as arbitrator, ■ was. tho first... to.'deal with, ; the claim; said that there was no accident at all, and' so the widow's'- -claim 'was disallowed ■(writes I "G.8.V.", mi ;the .Melbourne "Argus"). Feeling sure that what had occurred in the County Court was wrong, the engine-driver's widow went to the Court of Appeal to have it corrected. She did not go in vain. Tho Higher Court took the view that there was nothing in the fact that the stone was wilfully dropped to prevent what had happened from being an-; accident from the point of view of the man who had suffered from it. ' The fact that the injury had- arisen ifrom the mischievous act of the boy did not make it any the less an accidental jurySo far, so good. But what is the position when a workman is injured by the criminal act of another person, or, indeed, when he is murdered while working for his employer? -That is a question which . worried the English, Scotch, and Irish' Courts alike for a long timo. Many different opinions were given on it, until at last it was finally settled in the House of Lords by a bare majority. The eases in which it aroso are interesting, and thoy present some curious facts. The first arose in Ireland. Mr. Blayney Balfour had game in his preserves, and to protect it from tho inroads of poachers, he had in his service a gamekeeper, Robert Andeison'.by name. One' night, while Anderson was guarding his master's game, he was set upon by a party of poachers, who handled him roughly, knocked him down, and in tho playful way known to Irish poachers jumped " upon his.chest several times. In spite of this murderous treatment, the gamekeeper escaped with his life, and.lived to mako'a claim against his employer for. compensation. He received it, too, for two out of three Appeal Court Judges''in Dublin agreed that it, was an accident which caused the injury which he suffered. But to the dissenting Judge it'was incredible that anyone but. a lawyer would say that the gamekeeper had met with an accident when he was deliberately attacked and beaten, and tho man in the street will probably be just as incredulous. But suppose tho poachers had jumped' harder and crushed the life ,out ; of the., gamekeeper, would that have been tho" result of an accident? Wo shall see. Not many years ago the , Morpeth train murder attracted a good deal of public interest. A clerk in the employ of a coal company near Newcastle was going by train down to the colliery to pay the men. He had with him a bag containing a considerable sum. His dead body was found riddled with bullets under the. seat of the carriage

in which ho had travelled, and the empty bag was picked up later iv a pit. not far away. The murderer was discovered, convicted, and hanged. The murdered man's widow made a claim against tho coal company, and she was awarded £300 compensation by a I County Court. -The company appealed, and contended that the clerk had not met his death by accident. Surely "accident" negatives the idea of intention, and the clerk's death was the result of'*tho intentional felonious act of the murderer. There was no accident about it at oil. But the Court would not hear of it. So far as any intention of the victim was concerned his death was clearly accidental. If so, one may ask, "Did Desdemona die by accident?'" If not, why not? Because, so Lord Justice Farwell said, "tho horror of the crime dominates the .imaginatidn and compels the expression of,the situati.n in terms relating to the crime and the criminal alone." For the same reason presumably it would not bo a correct report of the murder of Rizzio to say that ho met with a fatal accident at Holyrood Palace. However that may be, the coal company's appeal did not succeed, and the clerk's widow retained the compensation awarded her. _ Let us now turn to the Court of Sessions in Edinburgh, and see what view it took of this question of a crime possibly being an accident- in contemplation of the Workmen's Compensation! Act- Tho men employed in a wood yard at,. Bo 'ness had gone on strike. Police were detailed to protect the free labourers who had taken the places of the strikers, but tho cordon was broken through by the mob i; missiles were hurled at the heads of tho free labourers, many of them wero assaulted, and work had to bo stopped. There ivas a rough and tumble strike riot, in the course of which one of the strike-breakers employed by the firm was injured. There followed in due courso a claim for compensation^ and it found its way in time to »the Appeal Court. Before that tribunal the English decision in the murdered Clerk's case and the Irish one in the gamekeeper's case were relied on by tho injured workman as establishing the position that he had been injured by accident. But the Scotch Judges would not hear of. it. Those decisions were not binding on them. They were free to hold, and they did hold, that this was not at all a case of accident within the Act. And so the claimant received no solatium for the cudgelling he had borne in the interest of free labour. .•■-''■' At last the vexed question came up for final determination in the House of Lords, whose rulings all British Courts are bound to follow. It came from the Irish Court of ■ Appeal. In the interesting old town of Trim thero was a school for training children under 15 'of the Meath and other union work houses in industrial pursuits. A young man named Kelly was an assistant master at the school, his duties being to superintend the boys in school and in the playground. Mr. Kelly was not popular with the boys. He had stopped them playing hurley and hockey in the school yard, and had even caught one of them stealing. The youngsters determined to "go for" him. Having armed themselves with hurley sticks, brooms, and scrubs —a scrub being a heavy block ,of wood on a broom handle —they hid themselves in a shed, and as Kelly came past the shed they rushed out at him and struck him with their clubs on the head. He died next day. His widowed mother claimed from the school board compensation for her son's death from injury by accident in the course of his employment. She was awarded £100, and tho award was upheld by the Irish Court of Appeal The House, of Lords was now to have ■ an opportunity of settling the question. The noble Lords required the case to bo argued before them, twice, an unus J iial. proceeding. Even having heard the whole matter threshed out a second time; their lordships wero unable to agree which side was right. Four of them agreed that the assistant master's death was caused by accident, and thi Jee wero of the contrary opinion. The "ayes" had it, and tho mother of Kelly retained the solatium of £100, at which sum the arbitrator had assessed het loss.