SUPREME COURT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 249, 24 November 1914, Page 10

SUPREME COURT.

CIVIL SESSION.

* ACCIDENT IN MEAT WORKS,

£IO9O DAMAGES CLAIMED,

The civil session of the Supreme Court was continued this morning before his Honour Mr Justice Denniston. The case taken was that of Clarence John Burton Moffet v. the Christchurch Meat Co., Ltd. - Mr F. S. Wilding, K.C., with him Mr A. T. Donnelly, appeared on behalf of the plaintiff, and Mr O. T. ,1. Alpers, with him Mr E. T. Harper, for the defendant company. The claim was for £IOOO, as compensation for the plaintiff's loss of an arm in the defendant company's _ works at Islington on July' 9 last. Opening the case for the plaintiff, Mr Wilding said that the question was one of some importance and interest. The action was brought by a young working man, who had lost an arm in an oleo (fat-mincing) machine in the Meat Company's works at Islington. The arm had been taken off at the elbowjoint. The injury was, of course, a very serious one, and if the plaintiff was entitled to damages at all, counsel submitted tkey should be substantial. He asked the jury to dismiss from their minds anything they might know of compensatign usually granted to workmen injured in works under circumstances where the employer is in no way to blame. This case.was not brought under the Workers' Compensation Act. They went outside that Act altogether. They put the blame of the accident on the plaintiff'a employers, and if i they could not carry to the minds of the jury the conviction that the company was to blame, either through the negligence of the company's directors or those in charge of the machine, they had no remedy in the present action, and would be relegated to the remedy provided in the Workers' Compensation Act. No element of that, should enter into the jury's judgment. The action was based upon the principle by which everyone is bound and governed—that we must all regulate our actions, qx activities in everything we do, so as not to catise injury to others. Tins principle was certainly binding Upon employers in their duty towards their employees. If by any chance they were guilty of negligence or want of care they Were liable for the whole consequences of any accident. . One of the by-products of the freezing business, Mr ...Wilding continued, was the fat, and this was put through a fairly complicated course of treatment. It was first of all cut into strips and cooled by a water spray, and then delivered on to benches for feeding into the oleo machine. This machine had to be fed by hand. There Were two classes of! machine, the newer of which had the hopper surrounded by: a steamjacket, so that the whole machine was heated and the fat went through easily. In the older class of machine there ;%a9 no steam-jacket, an'd the cold fat had often to be pressed down into the hopper by the hands of the feeder. The water from the fat collected in the hopper and .splashed out, carrying lumps of fat, W/hich got on to the platform under the feeder's feet, and rendered it very 'slippery. They did not- contend that the company should be compelled to have the very latest machinery in its but it was surely bound to have I machinery tliat would not endanger' the workers employed about it. >■•; The. plaintiff had been employed by the defendant company ever since he I left school at the age of 14 years—lie is ! now 22—but he had not been employed in the oleo machine Until July 9. "He had seen other men using it, and had seen them jnishing the" fat in with their haiids. Naturally, when he was order-

Ed to feed the machine, he was +acitiy ordered to do as he. had seen other workmen do. Whilst he was engaged m the feeding of the machine Mbffet got Ins-left hand, into the machine, and us "and -was caught in the screw and us arm dragged in up to the elbow. lie had; the presence of mind to throw the machine out of gear with his right lw -, J h ° I ,lailtjfl " s contention was that it the steam jacket machine had been used, the accident could not have occurred, and that it was the defendants duty to have had that machine installed. It was claimed that the defendant company was liable for damages because it had not installed that machine; that it had not provided a proper platform for the workmen to stand on; or that,, if the old machine were used, a wooden rammer, had not been provided for shoving the meat into the hopper. The companv had ample warning of the necessity'of these arrangements, as accidents had occurred on several occasions to men working the machines. One man had lost his fingers, and another had had his iinoers injured more than once. \ Counsel quoted legal authorities to support his contention that the. duty-of the company was to have provided a I sate machine. Evidence was called in proof of the facts as set forth in Mr Wilding'sopening. °