A stevedore’s workman, whilst unloading a ship, was injured owing to a defect in the tackle, and he was suing his master. The learned Judge withdrew the case from the jury, on the ground that the stevedore was not responsible for a defect in the ship’s tackle because the tackle did not belong to him.
Held: Lord Scroll said: ‘In my opinion, if the employer uses plant which is net his own for the purpose of doing something which he has engaged to do, it cannot possibly be said that he has no duty whatever in relation to that plant. Otherwise he would be able to take anything that came from anybody and to use anything in the work he was engaged upon without making any inquiry at all, and then say, in the event of an injury arising from a defect in the plant, that he had nothing to do with it, and so escape liability. That, to my mind, is unreasonable, and is not consistent with the second section. What I take to be the meaning of that is that if the employer uses plant which does not belong to him, he may have a duty in regard to the persons employed to take reasonable care to see that it is proper for the purpose for which it is need. It may be that in a case of this character, although he had that duty, yet, if he had dealt with these shipowners before and had never had any cause for complaint, the jury might think that he had reasonably discharged that duty. On the other hand, when you have evidence that the plant was old and had been in use for a long time, the jury might say they ware not satisfied that reasonable care had been taken to see that it was in a proper condition. Once establish the duty the question la, What would the jury consider a discharge of that duty?’.
Judges:
Lord Scroll
Citations:
[1907] 1 KB 649
Cited by:
Cited – Wilson v Tyneside Window Cleaning Co CA 24-Apr-1958
Pearce LJ said that if an employer sends an employee to work, ‘for instance in a respectable private house’, he could not be held negligent for not visiting the house himself ‘to see if the carpet in the hall created a trap’. . .
Cited – Davie v New Merton Board Mills CA 1958
Parker LJ pointed out that the reasoning in Biddle was inconsistent with other decisions to the effect that there is no duty of care in respect of premises over which the master has no control, but it is consistent with alternative ratios that the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Negligence
Updated: 15 May 2022; Ref: scu.445621