A duty to maintain involves an obligation to keep the thing in proper order by acts of maintenance before it falls out of condition, in a state which enables it to serve the purpose for which it exists.
Lord Jenkins said: ‘Were it not for the presence in the Act of 1937 of the definition of the word ‘maintained’ quoted above, which has no counterpart in the Act of 1954, I would have no hesitation in regarding the case of Galashiels Gas. Co. Ltd. v Millar as sufficient to conclude the present question in the appellant’s favour. The process of construing one statute by reference to another, and treating decisions on the meaning of the latter as determining the construction of the former is a process which should be applied with caution. But in the present case the language, the subject-matter and the intent of (for example) section 24 (1) of the Act of 1937 and section 81 (1) of the Act of 1954 are so closely allied that (apart from the ground of distinction afforded by the omission from the Act of 1954 of the definition contained in the Act of 1937, whatever it may be worth) it would, to my mind, be clearly wrong to give the words ‘properly maintained’ in section 81 (1) a different meaning from that which has been authoritatively assigned to precisely the same words in comparable provisions of the Act of 1937. I confess I would not willingly attribute this to my mind untoward effect to the absence from the Act of 1954 of the definition of the Act of 1937. It would, as I think, be manifestly absurd if the same statutory language applied to two precisely similar machines with precisely similar defects contracted in precisely similar circumstances should give rise to a breach of statutory duty with respect to one of them, but not with respect to the other, merely because the locus in quo was in the one case a mine and the other a factory.’
Judges:
Lord Jenkins, Lord Keith of Avonholm
Citations:
[1960] AC 633
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Smith v Northamptonshire County Council HL 20-May-2009
The claimant, a health care worker was visiting the home of a client when she fell from a defective wheelchair ramp and suffered injury. She sought damages from her employer.
Held: Her appeal failed (Lord Hope and Lady Hale dissenting). The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Personal Injury
Updated: 18 May 2022; Ref: scu.346526