Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This was a stated case on appeal from the Sheriff Court at Glasgow in an arbitration under the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 between Hugh Dempster, 37 Lyon Street, Glasgow, claimant and appellant, and Hunter & Sons, tailors, 123 St Vincent Street, Glasgow

The following facts were stated by the Sheriff-Substitute ( Boyd) to have been admitted, probation being renounced:—“(1) That the appellant is a window-cleaner and a workman in the employment of the Glasgow Window-Cleaning Company, and the respondents are tailors in Glasgow, having a workshop at 97 West Campbell Street there, which is a factory in terms of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897; (2) That on 20th September 1901 the respondents ordered the Glasgow Window-Cleaning Company to clean the windows of their workshop, and the said company sent the appellant to do this work; (3) That while the appellant was standing on the outside sill of a window and holding by the top sash his cleaning cloth stuck on a nail at the side of the window; it required some little effort to free the cloth, and the jerk he gave it loosened his hold of the sash, and he fell and was injured.”

On these facts the Sheriff-Substitute “found in law that the work in which the appellant was engaged at the time of the accident was not any part of or process in the work or business carried on by the respondents, but was merely ancillary or incidental thereto, and therefore assoilzied the respondents from the conclusions of the petition.”

The question of law for the opinion of the Court was—“Whether the work of cleaning the respondents' windows, in which the appellant was engaged at the time he met with the accident, was a part of or process in the trade or business carried on by the respondents as undertakers of their factory, or whether it was merely ancillary or incidental to the said trade or business in terms of section 4 of the Act?”

Section 4 of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 will be found ante, p. 103.

Argued for the appellant—Windowcleaning was a necessary part of the work carried on by the undertakers. It was part of the process and was analogous to carting, which had been held to be part of the business of the undertakers in several cases. Light was necessary, and so the windows had to be kept in proper order— Cooper & Company v. M'Govern, November 14, 1901, 39 S.L.R. 102; Greenhill v. Caledonian Railway Company, March 13, 1900, 2 F. 736, 37 S.L.R. 524; Bee v. Ovens & Sons, January 25, 1900, 2 F. 439, 37 S.L.R. 328; Burns v. North British Railway Company, February 20, 1900, 2 F. 629, 37 S.L.R. 448. The cases of the Dundee and Arbroath Joint-Railway Company v. Carlin, May 31, 1901, 3 F. 843, 38 S.L.R. 635, and the case of Wrigley v. Bagley & Wright (1901), 1 K.B. 780, were illustrative of things incidental and ancillary to the business of the undertakers, and so outwith the section. In the present case the work in which the pursuer was engaged was part of the undertakers' business and not merely ancillary to it.

The respondents' counsel were not called upon.