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United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions >> Keates v. Lewis Merthyr Consolidated Collieries, Ltd [1911] UKHL 661 (17 July 1911)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1911/49SLR0661.html
Cite as: [1911] UKHL 661, 49 ScotLR 661
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SCOTTISH_SLR_House_of_Lords
Page: 661↓
House of Lords.
(On Appeal from the Court of Appeal in England.)
(Before
v.
Subject_Master and Servant — Employers and Workmen Act 1875 (38 and 39 Vict. cap. 90), secs. 3 and 4 — Jurisdiction of Summary Court — Master Claiming Damages for Breach of Contract — Wages Due but not Claimed — Set-off.
Facts:
An employer company claimed damages for breach of contract against a workman in a summary court. Certain wages were due by the company to the workman which were not yet payable, and which he did not claim in the proceedings. The magistrate set off the damages against the wages and made a corresponding award.
Held, upon a construction of the statute, that the magistrate had jurisdiction to adjust and set off the workman's claim for wages notwithstanding that the workman had lodged no claim to them.
A workman was in dispute with his employers under the circumstances stated supra in rubric and in their Lordships' judgments. The Divisional Court held that the magistrate had jurisdiction to adjust and set off the workman's right to wages, and this judgment was confirmed by the Court of Appeal ( Vaughan Williams and Farwell, L.JJ., diss. Fletcher Moulton, L.J.).
The workman appealed.
Their Lordships gave considered judgment as follows:—
Page: 662↓
In the construction of a statute it is of course at all times and under all circumstances permissible to have regard to the state of things existing at the time when the statute was passed, and to the evils which as appears from its provisions it was designed to remedy; and I think that nothing could be more unsafe or more misleading than to allow oneself to be deterred from putting upon a statute the particular construction which the consideration of these things would lead one to adopt, by the apprehension of the prejudicial effect which it might have on rights and privileges conferred by subsequent legislation, unthought of at the time when the particular statute was passed.
It is necessary then to ask oneself what were the respective rights and liabilities of employer and employed in the year 1875, and what the jurisdiction and power conferred on County Courts to set off the respective claims of litigants who might come before them. The doctrine of common employment was then well established and in full operation. The Workmen's Compensation Act had not been passed. The employer who paid the wages which he owed, who did not dismiss illegally, and was not guilty of personal negligence in the selection of the fellow-servant of the complaining workman or of the machine with which that workman had to work, could not well be sued either in tort or contract; and the workman on his side would seldom if ever be sued save for damages for breach of his contract of service by leaving his employment without adequate notice, or for damages for negligence in discharge of the duties which his contract of employment imposed. Claims such as these were likely to be comparatively small in amount, and would be fully met by the sum of £50, the highest amount which the County Court could award.
By the combined operation of the 76th section of the County Courts Act in force in 1875 (9 and 10 Vict. cap. 95) and the 88th and three following sections of the Judicature Act of 1873, it is clear that the County Court had already ample jurisdiction to set off claims such as are in this case dealt with, if put forward in a litigation before it. But the statute of 1875 was passed, as set forth on the face of it, to enlarge the powers of the County Courts, not to leave them as they were, and it has enlarged them in a most remarkable way.
The Court may now under this very section (section 3) give relief which not only was never claimed by either of the parties litigant, but is directly in conflict with the relief claimed and setting at naught the rights which they respectively insist upon. For instance, if an employer should sue his workman for damages for breach of contract by refusing to do the work which he had contracted to do, and the workman insisted that the work which he refused to do was not work which under his contract he was bound to do, each party thus insisting on the contract between them, each standing as it were on the “letter of his bond,” the County Court Judge could in defiance of this insistence dissolve the contract, apportion the wages earned under it and award damages, presumably for its breach or for its termination, as the case might be, to either of the parties litigant, not one of which things was claimed by anyone concerned.
Again, instead of awarding damages, he might, under sub-section 3 of section 3, take security from the party in default for the due performance of so much of his contract as remained unperformed if the defaulter consented to that course. It is obvious that this peculiar quasi-parental jurisdiction was conferred in the interest of industrial peace and should not be hampered by rules of pleading. Section 3 confers jurisdiction in addition to that already possessed by the County Courts—for what end? In order, in the words of the statute, to “adjust and set off one against the other all such claims on the part either of the employer or the workman arising out of or incidental to the relation between them as the Court may find to be subsisting.”
It is conceded that these claims may have no connection whatever with the particular matter in dispute between the employer and the workman. The claim may be a claim for wages which the employer admits to be due. It need not be a contested claim, but according to the argument for the appellant the party sued can oust the operation of this remedial statute and leave things in precisely the same position as if it never had been passed, simply by omitting to give the notice required by the 76th section of 9 and 10 Vict. cap. 95, though there be no danger of surprise. In my view the consideration of section 3, sub-section 1, should be approached from an entirely different point of view from that suggested by the appellant.
I think that the object of the statute being, as in my opinion it obviously is, to promote industrial peace, and with that end, in the case of any dispute between employer and workman coming before the County Court, to secure the adjustment of all claims for debt or damages, wages, or other liability subsisting between them, whether connected with this dispute or not, one's attention ought to be directed to seeing whether there is any provision of the statute so clear and imperative as to prohibit the exercise of the benevolent jurisdiction conferred by it in such a case as the present. I think that the words “claims” which the Court “may find to be subsisting” are adequate, though not happily chosen to indicate claims which the Court may find that either party has the right to make, whether they have in fact put them forward in the litigation or not,
Page: 663↓
It was urged in argument that if the County Court or a court of summary jurisdiction has the jurisdiction exercised in this case, the employer might make a claim before either of these tribunals for a small sum, and that under such circumstances the tribunal whose jurisdiction he invoked would have power to adjudicate upon a claim of the workman, under the Workmen's Compensation Act, for compensation in respect of an injury sustained by him. I wish to say emphatically that I express no opinion upon that point. It does not arise in this case. The latter statute does not affect the claims adjudicated upon here. If unfortunate results of this kind, which must have been unforeseen in 1875, follow, it is a matter to be set right by the Legislature. But whether they do follow or not affords in my view no justification for construing the Act of 1875 otherwise than as it should be construed if this later statute had never been passed.
The workman contends that the jurisdiction to do this only arises where the claim, which the magistrate assumes thus to adjust and settle by means of set-off, is a claim made before him by the party entitled to make it, and not merely, as in this case, a claim of which he has been informed judicially, and as to the existence and correctness of which he has satisfied himself judicially.
The answer to this contention is to be found in the plain words of the section, which are in complete accord with the object of the statute taken as a whole. It is a statute dealing with industrial disputes, and it seeks to provide certain courts with a means of checking or composing such disputes so far as they are concerned with small pecuniary claims. In the sub-section following the one just quoted, the Act goes so far as to empower the magistrate to rescind wholly any contract between the employer and the workman if, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, he thinks it just so to do, “upon such terms as to the apportionment of wages or other sums due thereunder, and as to the payment of wages or damages or other sums due, as the court thinks just.” This is a very unusual power, and it shows that the County Court Judge or magistrate is being entrusted with a jurisdiction and discretion outside the limits of ordinary litigation. It opens a wide field of inquiry beyond the particular claim which one of the parties has brought before him. He is able under this 2nd sub-section to exercise a power similar to but stronger than that which the appellant says is so novel and extreme that the Legislature cannot be taken to have in tended it under sub-sec. 1. Thus, if he thought it expedient to rescind the contract between the parties, the claim or right to wages due would be one of “the circumstances of the case,” and, as such, would be subject to the magistrate's discretionary powers in reference to apportionment and payment. It seems to me that some such power is necessary to give effect to either sub-section. Sub-sec. 1 aims at settling disputes by the adjustment of all subsisting claims, and sub-sec. 2 aims at the same object by the summary termination of contracts which it may have become irksome, or dangerous to enforce. The scope of the statute being thus wide, there seems to be no ground on which the 1st sub-section can be properly read in a more restricted sense than its literal wording imports. In directing the magistrate to adjust all the claims between the parties which the court “finds to be subsisting,” the Legislature can scarcely be taken to have intended that the magistrate might find a claim for wages to be in fact subsisting between the parties, and yet be unable to deal with it in settling the whole account, because the workman had not thought it necessary to sue for it.
But the appellant contends that the mere right to have the wages paid is not a claim at all. This appears to be only another way of saying that it is not a claim preferred before the magistrate. The workman has worked in order to get his wages, and although he does not think it necessary to bring an action for them, it is quite well understood between his employer and himself that he wants his wages, that he is entitled to them, and that he means to have them. If he refrains from formal or explicit demand, it is only because in such circumstances it is so well understood and implied that it
Page: 664↓
Appeal dismissed.
Counsel for Appellant— Bailhache, K.C.— John Sankey, K.C.— Clive Lawrence. Agents— Smith, Rundell, & Dods, Solicitors.
Counsel for Respondents— Danckwerts, K.C.— Stewart Brown— H. H. Harding. Agents— Bell, Brodrick, & Gray, Solicitors.