Scottish Court of Session Decisions

By section 7, sub-section 1, of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897, it is enacted that the Act shall apply, inter alia, to employment “on, in, or about any building which exceeds thirty feet in height, and is either being constructed or repaired by means of a scaffolding”

The following case was stated in terms of the Act by the Sheriff-Substitute at Glasgow ( Spens) in an appeal by James M'Donald, house painter, Glasgow, against the Sheriff-Substitute's decision in an arbitration under the Act between the appellant and Hobbs & Samuel, house painters, Glasgow:—“This is an arbitration under The Workmen's Compensation Act 1897, brought before the Sheriff of Lanarkshire at Glasgow, in which the Sheriff is asked to find that compensation is due to the appellant by the respondents, to ordain the respondents to pay to the appellant compensation at the rate of 15s. per week from and after the 25th day of February 1899, or such other sum less or more weekly as may be found to be due to the appellant in terms of the Workmen's Compensation Act, to continue said weekly payments until the further orders of Court, with the legal interest on each weekly payment from the time the same falls due till paid, and to find the respondents liable in expenses. These claims were made in respect of injuries alleged to have been sustained by the appellant on 21st November 1898, while in the employment of the respondents, in consequence of which he avers he has since been unable to work, and will never be able to resume his employment as a house painter.

The case was heard before me of this date (June 2, 1899), when the following facts were admitted, viz.— (1) That on the 21st November 1898, the appellant, who is a journeyman house painter, and was then in the employment of the respondents, who are house painters, as such journeyman house painter was engaged painting iron beams or joists in the Dead Meat Market, Moore Street. Glasgow, which is a building over 30 feet in height. (2) That the said painting was done for the purpose of preserving said iron beams and joists from decay, and that the appellant when painting these beams necessarily used a ladder which had been provided by the respondents for the purpose for standing upon to reach said beams and do said work. (3) That while the appellant was so engaged the occupier of one of the stands for exhibiting carcases in said Dead Meat Market, and which stand was in close proximity to the said ladder, swung round the carcase of a bullock for the purpose of showing it to an intending purchaser. (4) That said carcase came violently in contact with said ladder, whereby the appellant was knocked off the same and fell to the ground. His skull was thereby fractured, and he sustained certain other serious injuries.

I decided that said building was not being repaired by means of a ‘scaffolding’ within the meaning of the Act, and therefore I found it unnecessary to decide whether the building was being ‘repaired,’

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and I held that the accident was not one cognisable under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and dismissed the application.

The question of law for the opinion of the Court is:—Whether the ladder used by the appellant at the time of the accident was ‘a scaffolding’ within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897?”

Argued for appellant—In construing the Act the word “scaffolding” was to be taken in a popular and not in a strictly technical sense. A scaffolding was an erection on which to stand, and this definition applied to a ladder. If it were held that a ladder was not a “scaffolding” within the meaning of the Act, it would put it within the power of employers to evade the plain intention of the Legislature by employing ladders of an abnormal length and in dangerous positions. The case of Wood v. Walsh & Sons [1899], 1 Q.B. 1009, appeared to be against his contention; but in the first place that was an English decision, and in the second place the force of the judgment as regards this point had been modified by the subsequent case of Hoddinott v. Newton, Chambers & Co. [1899], 1 Q.B. 1018, in which it was laid down by Collins, L.-J., who was one of the Judges in the case of Wood, that “the word ‘scaffolding’ must be interpreted by reference to the nature of the work for which the Legislature contemplated that it was to be used.” In any event, the building here was in point of fact under repair by means of scaffolding. If such were the case, the accident fell under the Act even if the particular ladder on which the appellant was working was not held to be a “scaffolding,” and if the painting at which he was engaged was held not to be “repairing” in terms of the Act. If the Court thought it necessary he would move that the case be sent back to the Sheriff to state whether the building was under repair by means of a scaffolding at the time of the accident.

Argued for respondents—The building was not at the time of the accident being “repaired by means of a scaffolding” in terms of the statute; that painting was not repairing, and that a ladder was not a scaffolding, had been authoritatively laid down in the case of Wood, supra. That decision was sound, and had in no sense been weakened by the judgment in Hoddinott. It was too late to seek to introduce new facts into the case.