United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions

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Cite as: [1914] UKHL 740, 51 ScotLR 740

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SCOTTISH_SLR_House_of_Lords

Page: 740↓

House of Lords.

Friday, July 17.. 1914

(Before Earl Loreburn, Lords Dunedin, Atkinson, Shaw, and Parmoor.)

51 SLR 740

Clark

v.

George Taylor &Company.

(In the Court of Session, March 6, 1914, 51 S.L.R. 418, and 1914 S.C. 432.)

Subject_Master and Servant — Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII, cap. 58), First Schedule 1 (b) — “Incapacity for Work Results from the Injury” — Tendency to Obesity Increased by Enforced Idleness Caused by Injury.
Facts:

A workman was injured by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment on 7th October 1910, and his employers paid him compensation up to 11th July 1913, when they ceased payment on the ground that he had recovered from the effects of his injuries. A remit having been made a medical man reported—“(1) The defendant has recovered from the direct effects of his injury but not from the indirect. (The injury having thrown the man out of work for a time, his age—sixty—three years—coupled with his disposition to obesity have told against him, so that from lack of continuity of activity he has become less and less fit for labour of any kind.) He is not fitted to undertake any work other than that of a more or less sedentary character—for example, a watchman.” And again—“The man's incapacity for work has arisen from the fact that he has been doing no hard work during the last three years.” The arbiter “found that his partial incapacity on 8th October 1913 did not result from the injuries sustained by him on 7th October 1910.” Held (judgment of the First Division) that the arbiter might so find.

Headnote:

This case is reported ante ut supra.

George Taylor & Company, the respondents in the Court of Session, appealed to the House of Lords.

At delivering judgment—

Judgment:

Earl Loreburn—If I were to act upon my own opinion of the merits of this case and regarded that as being within my province I should draw a conclusion from the evidence as contained in the award the same as that which was drawn by the Court of Session. I agree with the reasoning, and I think, if I may respectfully say so, that the conclusions they arrived at were the same conclusions as I myself should have come to. That, however, is not what we have to consider.

In this case the only point raised before the arbiter was whether the present incapacity

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of this man resulted from his injury. The arbiter found that it did not result from his injury. We may not go into the evidence for the purpose of seeing whether we should agree with him, we must take the findings of the Sheriff as findings upon which his conclusion rests, and we may look at that conclusion and ask whether a reasonable man could arrive at it or not.

Now the arbiter says that the partial incapacity on the 8th of October 1013, which is the crucial date, did not result from the injury sustained by the applicant on the 7th October 1910. I ask whether that is such a finding that I can say that a reasonable man could not have arrived at it. The learned arbiter might think that the increase of obesity and age were as a matter of substance, and looking at it broadly, the real causes which led to this incapacity—that the incapacity resulted from that and not from the injury. You cannot analyse the chain of causation too closely or you will get into all the labyrinth of argument and disputation which has constantly surrounded the discussion of this subject The arbiter may, after puzzling over these considerations, have said to himself in the end, “I think on the whole that it was the disease and the age which was the cause of his incapacity, and in fact he has said so.

Mr Moncrieff addressed to us an argument with very remarkable ability, very concise, very powerful, and very much to the point. He said that the arbiter had made an error in law, because he had assumed that in order to bring the case within the statute the incapacity must be the direct consequence of the injury, and that the injury must be the exclusive cause of the incapacity. If that were so, then I should think it was an error of law. It is not necessary that the incapacity should be the direct result of the injury. It is not necessary that there should be no contributory source of weakness. But in this case I think that the arbiter may have arrived, and very likely did arrive, at his conclusions from the considerations to which I have referred. When you ask, in the language of the statute, whether something results from the injury, if we are to refine, we may ask, what is the meaning of resulting; how far back are you to carry the claim? It is a question of fact in each case. Each of us must judge in each case how near or how remote the injury is. I do not know how you could lay down a rule of law prescribing the degree of remoteness which excludes the case from the statute, nor could you lay down any formula to guide people to the conclusion that this quantum or that quantum of contributory cause was the cause from which the incapacity resulted. How much other causes contributed, if at all, what is the degree of connection which is necessary between the incapacity and the injury, are, in my opinion, questions of fact.

I do not therefore find that the learned arbiter acted on a wrong view of the law, I do not find that a reasonable man must have found in a different sense, and therefore I think that his award ought to be restored, and in saying so I will expressly repeat that, in my opinion, if I had to form an opinion upon the facts of this case I should have come to the same opinion as that which the Court of Session has arrived at.

Lord Dunedin—I think that this case is truly a corollary of the last. I do not find that there is any necessity for me to think that the arbitrator here made a mistake in law. The test of that always is this—assume the law to be rightly stated and then put to yourself the question—could he have arrived at the result that he did with that law so rightly stated? I think he could upon a certain view of the facts, and I think there were sufficient facts for him to come to that result.

I say no more, except that I agree with the judgment of Lord Johnston, and I concur in the remarks which have just fallen from the noble Earl on the Woolsack.

Lord Atkinson—I concur with the judgment delivered by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack. At the same time I must confess that I am not at all certain that the arbiter did not arrive at the conclusion at which he has come under the mistaken view of the law that under section 1, sub-section ( b), of the First Schedule the result must be the direct result of the injury. That upon the case is left obscure, but if there be any obscurity about it I think it is entirely due to the way in which the parties have thought proper to conduct the case. Practically the case was decided upon the medical evidence of the gentleman most wisely selected as the person who was to be really the medical witness of both parties, and I think that the parties should, if they desired to raise this question, have endeavoured to get a more definite statement from the learned Judge in the case he was about to submit upon this point. That being so, I do not feel that there are materials before me which enable me to say that the Sheriff-Substitute misdirected himself upon a point of law, or came to a wrong conclusion upon a point of law in the construction of the statute. As to the question of fact, if he did not misdirect himself and took a proper view of the true meaning of the statute, I do not think upon the finding of fact that his award can be disturbed.

Lord Shaw—In the last case upon the facts I agreed with the arbitrator, in the present case I should have come to a different conclusion. In both cases alike, however, I hold that it would be invading the arbitrator's province to reverse his verdict. And for brevity's sake I may say that for the reasons shown by me and explained in the case of Lendrum I agree to the course now proposed in this case of Taylor.

Lord Parmoor—I concur. I think the only possible ground on which the arbitrator's award could have been questioned would be the ground that he had made a mistake in law in excluding matters of indirect damage. For a time I thought that might be so, having regard to the very able argument of Mr Moncrieff, but I have satisfied myself that no such mistake of law has

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been committed by the arbiter, and I entirely concur in the judgment of the noble and learned Earl on the Woolsack.

Their Lordships reversed, with expenses, the order appealed from.

Counsel:

Counsel for Clark (Appellant in the Court of Session, Respondent in the House of Lords)— Moncrieff, K.C.— Mackenzie Stuart. Agents—— Macpherson & Mackay, S.S.C., Edinburgh— R. S. Taylor, Son, & Humbert, London.

Counsel for George Taylor & Company (Respondents in the Court of Session, Appellants in the House of Lords)— Horne, K.C.— Fenton. Agents— James S. Inglis, Kilmarnock— Simpson & Marwick, W.S., Edinburgh— Bell & Sugden, London.
1914