A PUBLIC RISK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1939, Page 8

A PUBLIC RISK

DAUGHTER'S CLAIM FAILS

FATHER'S FALL, FROM WHARF

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. That a waterside worker who, after finishing work, fell from the wharf into the harbour and was drowned did not meet with an accident in the course of his duties was the finding of the Arbitration Court today in a case in which Alice Emily May Spurr, daughter of Melville Holmes, sought £29 from, the Richardson Steamship Line, on,one of whose vessels the deceased was working as a union waterside worker. The accident occurred on June 22. At the time he fell Holmes was a member of a party walking along the wharf to" the waiting shed. The question for the Court to decide was whether that walk was in the course of Holmes's employment. Quoting a number of decisions similar cases, his Honour, Mr. Justice O'Regan, said one fact emerged. At the time of the accident a worker must have been exposed to some risk not only incidental to his employment but beyond that to which the public generally were exposed. The public had access to the wharf, which, therefore, was indistinguishable from a public highway. The accident w.as due to a risk to which any member of- the public was equally exposed. Judgment was given for the defendant company. "Had the deceased slipped and been injured in the shed where he was being paid off, or had the accident happened when he was leaving the entrance to that shed, the position woujd have been different," his Honour said.