EARTHQUAKE RISKS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17588, 2 October 1931, Page 8

EARTHQUAKE RISKS

LIABILITY OF .EMPLOYERS CLAIMS TOR COMPENSATION (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, last night. The argument before tho Court of Appeal in the ease of Borthwick and Co. v. Ryan, in which interesting questions of the workers’ compensation law and the earthquake are concerned, was continued this afternoon. Mr. P. J. O’Regan, in opening the ease for the defendants, said lie was faced with the task of replying to formidable arguments, and intimated that his argument would he fai.yly long. He presented three .submissions'for the consideration of the court: (1) That the Workers’ ’Compensation Act and the cases thereunder, have given no meaning to tho word “accident” that it did not possess before the Act was passed. (2) If the case he otherwise within the Workers’ Compensation Act, the fact that the origin of the accident was a thunderstorm, gale, or earthquake is irrelevant, (3) Every person, who was at work on the day of the earthquake in a building, quarry, gravel pit, street or highway, was exposed to locality, risk, and if killed or injured by accident the ease was within the Statute. Answering the Chief Justice 1 , Mr. O’Regan said every worker who* in the course of his employment, was injured during tho earthquake was entitled to compensation. Mr. Luckie, in support, said the deceased husband of his client, Mrs. Ashwell, was employed ns, the porter of the Clarendon Hotel', Napier, and was killed whilst on a message along Hastings street for his 1 employer. The risk arose immediately out of his employment. He submitted‘that the risk to which the workers in Napier were subject was not a community risk common to all mankind, hut a risk limited to those who worked in brick buildings!. The risk did Uot depend on the earthquake alone, but on (he earthquake plus brick buildings. The court adjourned till to-morrow.