THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1898. THE BRUNNER DECISION.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 3443, 26 May 1898, Page 2

THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.)

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1898. THE BRUNNER DECISION.

With tvhich are th*j iVelliagtort Independent-, established and the iSVt- Zealaarier.

Subject to the Privy Council decision which has yet to he obi, lined, the judgment delivered in the Appeal Court yesterday is that debenture - holders ia tho Groymouth-Point Elizrbatli Goal Company have a prior claim on the property as against those relatives of injured miners who were recently awarded compensation in connection with a mining accident. In other words the debenture-holders are held to have a first lien, and that being so we may perhaps conclude that the miners’ relatives have a small chance of turning their previous verdict into money. However hard this may prove in effect there seems to be no question as to tho justice of it. - The effect of the Court’s judgment is that the debenture-holders advanced money on the specific understanding that they were given a first charge on the security. As was indicated in the course of these proceedings, the claim of the plaintiffs was analagoua to that of a person who, having gained a verdict against a lessee, sought to enforce it at the expense of tho freeholder. But as a matter of fairness tho charge, or any such charge, should only operate on the person from whom damages are gained, and the resultant liability of such person is necessarily subject to whatever encumbrances he has previously incurred. In effect the property, or the major part of it, all along bslonged to the debentureholders. The inference miy suggest itself that under the circumstances the plaintiffs should have joined the debentureholders as defendants when they sued for damages. Probably that was not possible, as a matter of technical legal prpoedura. In any case it was not done, and the net fact now is that claims and verdicts for compensation, being set against prior rights in an endeavour to obtain a first lien, have rightly failed.

This, as has been said, will probably mean that the bereaved will be deprived of means of obtaining compensation. In that respect the position is a regrectable one. The blame, however, is not with the debenture-holders or their’ trustees —who have merely contended for their rights—but with the community. It should be recognised that trades like t hose which miners pursue are so especially dangerous as to oast on the community a certain responsibility for compensating for the disastrous results such pursuits constantly threaten. This could be done by aa insurance scheme the cost of which would be borne nominally by employers and employed, but actually by consumers, though in such mall proportion that its incidence would be scarcely noticeable. To put that expense on micaproprietors would be disastrous, because it would mean shutting foreign capital out. And if the mines woro nationalised and worked by the Government we should bo where we were, since, if employers’ liability was still recognised to the extent recently admitted, the community would be liable for compensation iu addition to having to incur the groat disabilities of a communistic system of coal mining. Per the present, at any rate, we require foreign capital, which will be withdrawn if it is too heavily taxed. The Ministry sees that in the light of the’ recent Brunner judgment, and proposes to amend the Coal Mines Act next .so as to put the law relating to oq/qpensation on a fairer basis. Wo hope it' will go further and make provision for such a scheme of insurance as the interest of the miners requires.