DANGEROUS LEGISLATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 159, 17 July 1901, Page 2

DANGEROUS LEGISLATION.

(To tho Editor of the Times.) [ Sir,—My attention lias been attracted bv r two letters which appear in your issue of , yesterday’s date, signed respectively , Weary Willie and Francis Stafford,on the I subject of liability of employers for ac- . cidents happening to any person employed , by them. If the information I have obtained on the subject be correct, the liberty of every citizen is most seriously interfered with; so much is this the caso that I can hardly bring myself to believe the Legislature could have understood what they were doing when they passed such a law. It your tank is on an elevated j spot, and you employ a man to clean it out, or any similar operation, say sawing up wood, or repairing an old building, and the person employed meets with an accident, you are liable for the pecuniary oss he may sustain through expenses or loss of time. And this extends .up to the maximum sum of L4OO. I hope some of our legal friends will kindly set me rmht if I am wrong in the above deductions. I lf 3* m "S’? 1 - !t appears to me that petitions against such a law from all parts ‘ of the colony should be poured into the Legislature. An unprincipled, lazv employee might very seriously injures person who had given him employment'oven from a desire to help him. Such an' injustice should not bo possible'in a pn> gressive colony such as New Zealand claims to be.—l am, eto, July 16th,