Paragraph 3 ( a) of the Explosives in Coal Mines Order of 1st September 1913 provides:-‘If a shot misses fire the person firing the shots hall not approach, or allow anyone to approach, the shot-hole until an interval has elapsed of not less than ten minutes in the case of shots fired by electricity or by a squib, and not less than an hour in the case of shots fired by other means.’
In a mine to which the above regulation applied a shot missed fire, and a miner who was not the person who had actually applied the light to the fuse returned to the working-face within an hour in order to light the fuse, which he believed had not been ignited, and was injured in consequence of the shot then going off. Held (aff. judgment of the Second Division) that as he was not the person who had applied the light to the fuse, he was not the person firing the shot, and that accordingly he had not acted in breach of the Order in returning to the shot-hole.
Viscount Haldane, Viscount Finlay, Lord Dunedin, Lord Shaw and Lord Sumner
[1922] UKHL 118, 59 SLR 118
Bailii
Scotland
Personal Injury, Employment
Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.632793