Paragraph 3 ( a) of the Explosives in Coal Mines Order of 1st September 1913 provides-‘If a shot misses fire the person firing the shot shall 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.’
Two shots were laid close together in a mine by two miners A and B, each of whom applied a light to his respective fuse. Both A and B were of opinion that A’s fuse had failed to ignite, but they retired to a place of safety as B’s fuse was burning. B’s shot went off, and thirty or forty minutes thereafter A returned to the shot-hole for the purpose of lighting the fuse attached to his shot. As he approached his shot it went off and he was seriously injured. The arbitrator found as a fact that A had failed to light the fuse of his shot. Held ( aff. judgment of the Second Division) that A’s shot had missed fire within the meaning of the Order, and that as A had contravened the Order in approaching the shot-hole within an hour the accident did not arise out of and in the course of his employment.
Viscount Haldane, Viscount Finlay, Lord Dunedin, Lord Shaw, and Lord Sumner
[1922] UKHL 116, 59 SLR 116
Bailii
Scotland
Personal Injury
Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.632794