A window cleaner employed by an independent contractor was injured at the factory.
Held: There is nothing new in construing legislation designed for the protection of workers as inapplicable to other visitors to the relevant premises. Viscount Kilmuir said: ‘It is for the plaintiff to prove on a balance of probabilities both that the safety measures would have been effective and that the injured person would have made use of them had they been available.’ As to whether he was a person employed, he said: ‘In my view, the true distinction is between those who are to work for the purposes of the factory and those who are not. Clearly, maintenance of the factory is work for the purpose of the factory, while the arrest of a felon or the putting out of a fire is not, though it may benefit the factory indirectly. Window cleaning is part of the maintenance of the factory and in my view the deceased was within the protection afforded.’
Viscount Kilmuir said that although a person is not taken outside the ambit of the Act merely because he is an independent contractor the Act would not extend to a police constable who enters a factory in pursuit of a felon
‘It is for the plaintiff to prove on a balance of probabilities both that the safety measures would have been effective and that the injured person would have made use of them had they been available.’
Viscount Kilmuir
[1964] AC 307
Factories Act 1937
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – McDonald v National Grid Electricity Transmission Plc SC 22-Oct-2014
Contact visiting plants supported asbestos claim
The deceased had worked as a lorry driver regularly collecting pulverized fuel ash from a power station. On his visits he was at areas with asbestos dust. He came to die from mesothelioma. His widow now pursued his claim that the respondent had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 22 July 2021; Ref: scu.538253
