Meeting Earthquake Loss

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 235, 17 September 1934, Page 8

Meeting Earthquake Loss

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —There is another phase of oui earthquake relief which is not fully understood, and which a judgment given Just week emphasises once again, it is the l complex question ot the employer’s responsibility for any hurt to nis workers in earthquake visitation. No business man or company employing even a few hands could make provision without outside help to satisfy every possible claim if he or it were loaded with that responsibility. Nor can any private accident company undertake to cover such an immeasurable risk. It can only be done bj national insurance, or better still by international insurance.

In connection with the deaths oi workers in the earthquakes of February 1931, the New Zealand Appeal Court was asked to affirm that the earthquakes did not kill or physically injure anybody. Those who met with death or injury did so by the collapse of buildings. Therefore if the sufferers were at their employ then the employer was liable for their injury. The Appeal Court did not accept that argument, and decided that the hurt did not arise out of or in course of their employment. Hud that verdict been accepted it would liave saved resultant complications. The sufferers, or their dependants, would have had first claim on the generous contributions to the relief funds. Such a catastrophe had not been provided for in any available cover of employer's liability by accident insurance.

A request was made that a sum should' be givch from the relief funds to carry the case to the Privy Council. Though the money hud not been contributed for such a purpose, it was provided. How much was so used has never been told. The Public Trustee, who was associated with loading politicians in control of the people’s subscriptions has written: “As may be imagined the expenses attendant on such an appeal amount to a considerable sum.”

The Privy Council reversed the judgment of our Appeal Court. Its verdict touched on some of the inescapable complications that were bound to ensue. While the Council ruled that an employee unable to escape from an earthquake collapsing building could recovci damage if hurt ensued, yet if he or she crossed the threshold to seek safety outside no claim for compensation could lie. Here are some of the questions arising from the verdict. If the employer in tenanted premises is liable for earthquake hurt to his employees, how far is the owner of the property concerned!' In our earthquakes experience there were instances ot injury in some establishments caused by flying bricks from adjoining buildings. If the primary responsibility of paying compensation to an injured worker js upon the employer, must it not in natural justice have the right of recovery from the owner of the brick? If such a heavy penalty is imposed upon the employer for hurt to any member of his staff through buildings failing to stand up no matter how intense the shake, and no matter whether the building was his or not, should not the local body that governs such buildings and to whose commands the plans had to conform, be also a party in bearing th<costs of compensation ? If some people hurt inside a building are to have compensation, why should not other people hurt outsido the building also have compensation? And so on and so on. Suffice to say that the Privy Council’s judgment was impracticable, the liability it created immeasurable, so one of the first things the Government had to do after securing the “victory” was to pass an Act making it largely nugatory in any future disaster. Had our statesmen given full thought to the issues involved they would not have spent other people’s money contributed to succour the distressed in heavy legal expenses for a doubtful benefit. We are not sufficiently interested in abstract justice to trouble whether the accident insurance companies have had a fair deal or not. They have had to pay thousands of pounds for a liability never dreamt of, and for which they were never paid to carry. In the case determined last week no accident policy existed, so the estate of a well known citizen, who also lost his life in the earthquake, is seriously curtailed to the detriment of his widow and children as an outcome of tho judgment. The whole position has been, and still remains unsatisfactory to all concerned. The Government or its representatives have sought to spread the loss consequent on our earthquakes upon the creditors of the sufferers, and upon accident insurance companies. It will itself have to bear more than it has yet shown anv disposition to do. Its loans so grudgingly granted, with every insistence upon maximum security and preference., cannot in many cases be repaid in accordance with the terms demanded. That is due to the fact that even in normal times the average business rarely provides more than a living for the proprietor’s oversight, labour, and capital. A number fail to do even that much. In such circumstances it is impossible to bear the load of restoration without the longest term of repayment with the lightest interest charges. No matter how willing the borrowers may be to meet their obligations, anyone with knowledge of retail business, knows the futility of ever exnecting the greatest financial sufferers t» stumble on unrelieved. —Yours, etc., H. R FRENCH. Hastings. 16/9734.