SUPREME COURT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17402, 24 August 1918, Page 13

SUPREME COURT

CIVIL SITTINGS. FETDAT, ATOTIST 23. I (Before his Honor Mr Justice Sam and a special jury of 12.) COTTQS V. SHIKL. Oaim £2000 damages. Mr Solomon, K.G., and _Mr J. S. Sinclair appeared for tie plaintiff, Mary Ann Cotton, widow ; Mr A. S. Adams and Mr W. G. Hay for the defendants (0. and W. Shiel, quarryowners). This partly-heard case was resumed, and ; evidence was given by Edwin 11. Green (Government Inspector of Mines and Quarries), Alexander Wimpenny (Government Inspector of Mines and Quarries), Professor Park (Professor of Mining, Otago University), and James Hammond (quarry: manager for the: Otago Harbour Board). . Mr Hay, for the defendants, said tnat experts would be called who were practical quarry men, and all would say that a quarry oould not bo carried; on except at great and inevitable risk. That was the reason why extra premiums were asked by , insurance companies from men working in quarries. Risk was a necessary incident of the occupation and industry of quarrying. If the accident occurred in that way, and if the fall came down in the ordinary way of quarrying, there was no blame on the defendants. Instinct told one of danger in a quarry, and men who went into a quarry to work took that risk. Hie suggestion of the plaintiff was that a man ought not to have been put under the place from which the fall came, because there were good grounds for believing that the face was unsafe, and that a fall such as did occur ■would occur. It was clear from the evidence that. the best man to judge of the safety of the face of a quarry was the individual associated with it as foreman and the other expert quarrymen who knew the quarry. Experience and expertness were required, and' the best judge of all was, not the man who went there after an accident but the man who knew his quarry and his locality. Mr Harrison, the foreman, had had 14- yeare of working the quarry as foreman, and hid never previously had any trouble or accident. He was the very mxn to judge whether the quarry was safe on the morninp of the accident or not. There were also three other experts in the quarry that morning, and they all believed that the face was safe. They saw no signs of danger. Could the jury say that the judgment of those four experts was unsound? It was unsound to some extent, because some material came down, but the point was that ■ they had honest and good grounds for thinking that the face_ was safe—so safe that they were working in the quarry themselves.

Evidence was given by Henry James Harrision (foreman of Shiels* quarry), Donald M'Laren .quarryman), James M*Laxen (quarryman), George R. Hudson (quarryman), Benjamin B. Couston (civil engineer and surveyor), Richard A. Palmer (quarry manager, Logan's Point quarry), Malcolm Stevenson (contractor), Harold King (chief inspector of works, Dunedin Corporation), John Edie (civil engineer and surveyor, and engineer for the Tuapeka County Council), and Professor "Waters (School of TVK™*. Otago University). "*® case for the defendants. At 5.45 p.m. the court adjourned until this morning at 10 o'clock.