Accident Liability

Southland Times, Issue 24859, 26 September 1942, Page 4

Accident Liability

A SOURCE of serious injustice has been removed by the gazetting of regulations under which the Crown accepts liability for damage resulting from accidents caused by the negligence of drivers in the armed forces. Although the Crown was bound by the Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third Party Risks) Act, 1928, an earlier enactment, the Crown Suits Amendment Act, 1910, absolved it from employer’s liability for any act committed by members of the defence forces and certain other servants. An injured person was left only with the right to sue a military driver personally, and when this right was invoked in the Magistrate’s Court in Wellington last May Mr W. H. Goulding, S.M., expressed the opinion that it would be “singularly unfortunate” if the Army Department or the Crown proposed to take shelter behind the Crown Suits Amendment Act, thus bringing about a return to the days before third-party insurance. Subsequently the Attorney-General announced that the Government had decided to indemnify drivers of military vehicles “in certain cases when acting under the instructions of a superior officer.” This undertaking, however, did not remove the risk of injustice, as it left the Army Department to decide in what circumstances it would accept liability and to decide, in each case, whether those circumstances obtained or not. The Motor Unions then made further representations, of which the new regulations are apparently the outcome. The principle of making the Crown, in the words of the British Lord Chancellor, “answerable for its servants’ negligence and torts just as much as any other employer”

is a manifestly fair one, and it is gratifying to see that the Government has decided to adopt this principle without any reservations.