Page: 61↓
(Before
(In the Court of Session, May 20, 1920, 58 S.L.R. 465.)
Subject_Workmen's Compensation Act — Seaman — Injury during Voyage — Desertion — Liability of Employer under Merchant Shipping Acts — Emergence of Right to Compensation — Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII, cap. 58), sec. 7 (1) (e) — Merchant Shipping Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII, cap. 48), sec. 34 (1).
A seaman who was engaged for a round voyage from Bombay to the United Kingdom and back to Bombay met with an accident during the voyage which partially incapacitated him. He was thereafter maintained by his employers in accordance with the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, and brought in one of their vessels to Liverpool and thence by train to Glasgow, where he rejoined his ship. Before the expiry of his contract of service he deserted, and thereafter claimed compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Held ( diss. Lord Sumner, aff. the judgment of the Second Division) that as the liability of the shipowners under the Merchant Shipping Act had been terminated by the seaman's desertion the latter was entitled to claim compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and that the shipowners could not postpone their liability therefor until the termination of the voyage.
The case is reported ante ut supra.
The shipowners appealed.
At delivering judgment—
The way in which the question arose was this—It was a question tried under the Workmen's Compensation Act, the arbitrator being the Sheriff-Substitute of Lanarkshire, and he has made a statement of his findings in the usual form, which is somewhat meagre but which raises the point. The respondent, who was a Mohammedan seaman, was engaged by the appellants, apparently at Bombay, for a round voyage from that city to the United Kingdom and back to Bombay within a year, and in the course of the voyage he met with an accident to his right hand, which appears to have been of a somewhat severe character. After the accident the respondent was treated in hospital at Marseilles, where the steamer appears to have stopped, and then he was brought after treatment by the appellants in one of their steamers to Liverpool and thence by train to Glasgow, where he rejoined the steamer the “Circassia.” Just after this, in September 1920, he left the “Circassia” without leave and deserted the service.
Now these are the facts as found, and on these facts the arbitrator raises this question, which went to the Second Division—“On the facts as stated, and in view of the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, section 34, and the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906, section 7 (1) ( e), was I as arbitrator entitled to refuse an award of compensation?” The view he took was this, that the two statutes must be read together, and that the right given by the Workmen's Compensation Act was a right which could not be put into operation because of a provision as to liability in the other Act, to which I will in a moment call your Lordships' attention. The provision in the Merchant Shipping Act is the one which comes first in the order of date. The two Acts were passed in the same year, but the Merchant Shipping Act was passed, I think, first. It is section 34, sub-section (1)—“If the master of, or a seaman belonging to, a ship receives any hurt or injury in the service of the ship, or suffers from any illness” (with certain exceptions) “the expense of providing the necessary surgical and medical advice and attendance and medicine, and also the expenses of the maintenance of the master or seaman until he is cured or dies, or is returned to a proper return port, and of his conveyance to the port, and in the case of death the expense (if any) of his burial, shall be defrayed by the owner of the ship, without any deduction on that account from his wages.” Now that is a right given to the seaman in the present case. The Workmen's Compensation Act, sec. 7, sub-sec. (1) ( e), says this—“The weekly payment” (that is, in the case of compensation being recovered under the Workmen's Compensation Act) “shall not be payable in respect of the period during which the owner of the ship is, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, as amended by any subsequent enactment or otherwise, liable to defray the expenses of maintenance of the injured master, seaman, or apprentice.”
Now the real question seems to me on those sections to be whether there was liability under the Merchant Shipping Act to defray the expenses of maintenance. The
Page: 62↓
For these reasons I move your Lordships that the judgment of the Court below be affirmed and the appeal dismissed with costs.
Now it appears to me that it is not a question of a part of the contract of service. There is no clause in the contract of service to affect the section of the Merchant Shipping Act for the benefit of the sailor. It is a mere statutory right given to the sailor for his benefit in the events which are contemplated by these sections, and of course it is obviously in the highest degree desirable that there should be such provision, for
Page: 63↓
The effect of the 7th section of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 is to apply it to seamen, and the immediate effect of that is that if there is an accident a seaman, like other workmen, will be entitled to compensation in terms of the First Schedule, and the terms of the First Schedule provide for a weekly payment in respect of a “total or partial incapacity.” But then section 7, while it applies the Act, does so under certain modifications, and one modification is that under section 7 (1) ( e) there is cut out from the payments that the seaman would naturally receive all payments during a certain period, and that period is thus defined—“The weekly payment shall not be payable in respect of the period during which the owner of the ship is, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, as amended by any subsequent enactment or otherwise, liable to defray the expenses of maintenance of the injured master, seaman, or apprentice.”
Now the whole point, I think, is whether that expression in the Act “liable” refers to the period under which there may be what I may call potential liability under the terms of the Merchant Shipping Act, or whether it means the period during which under the exact circumstances of the case there is de facto liability. I have come to be of opinion that the more natural way of taking the two Acts together is to take the latter reading. My great difficulty has arisen from this, that undoubtedly that does allow a person to take advantage of his own default in this sense, that he may default in order to get the more ample provision under Act 2 than he would have got under Act 1. If the Act gives it him it may be bad policy, but still he gets it. I say that because Mr Mackay made an effort to show that here such benefits as the seaman was entitled to get were benefits outside the contract and after the termination of the contract. I do not go on that at all, because I do not think we have got in this case sufficient facts found to know whether this particular man's contract of service had been terminated or not. That the man's contract could be terminated by being landed at a foreign port I have no doubt. I have equally little doubt that it could not be terminated if he were landed only a few hours even though a certificate were given. Therefore I have gone, I think, upon the natural meaning of the finding of the Sheriff-Substitute when he speaks of his deserting his service. Not with standing that I think, taking the two Acts of Parliament as they stand, they lead to the result to which I have eventually come, and I therefore also agree that the appeal should be dismissed.
In the case of M'Dermott in this House we found that the principle to be applied was not to refuse the benefits under either Act except in the sense that there should be no conflicting or overlapping provisions, but that instead of that the beneficial provisions of both sections should be applicable.
Page: 64↓
The whole matter appears to me to be settled, as my noble and learned friend Lord Dunedin has said, by the construction of the word “liable” in section 7 (1) ( e) of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906. What happened was this. In June the workman sustained his accident; he was put ashore in Marseilles; he remained in hospital for some weeks there; and afterwards he arrived in Glasgow under very roper arrangements, I am certain, made by the owners of the “Circassia.” He went on board the ship, which was then going to sail for Bombay, and he left the ship. If the learned Sheriff-Substitute is of opinion that that was a continuing service, he is justified in using the word “deserting”; but whether the seaman deserted the ship, or whether he left it as of right, matters nothing in the construction of this section, because I am clearly of opinion that when the owners made this seaman the offer to convey him from Glasgow to Bombay to his own home port, and when the seaman declined to accept that offer, the obligation of the owners was completely at an end, and it is mere finesse, without any sense or reason, to argue that they still remained liable to perform that obligation. There is no such liability; it is at an end. And if there be no such liability I have to construe now these words—“The weekly payment”—such a payment as is asked in this case—“shall not be payable in respect of the period during which the owner of the ship is, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, as amended by any subsequent enactment or otherwise, liable to defray the expenses of maintenance of the injured master, seaman, or apprentice.” There is no such liability; there are no such expenses to pay; they have been all paid except the return journey, and the return journey is not asked. It is a mere conjectural or imaginative liability that is set up, and I cannot construe the statute in any sense than that it applies to the actual fact of liability, not to an imaginative situation.
For these reasons I concur.
There is no sounder principle in workmen's compensation cases than to abide literally and loyally by the findings of the arbitrator, and to my mind it is perfectly clear that the arbitrator in this case found as a fact that the seaman in question was still in the service of the appellants at the time when he deserted. He says that after the man had been treated in hospital at Marseilles, and brought by one of the appellants’ steamers to Liverpool and thence by train to Glasgow, he rejoined the “Circassia,” and that while there, and while the appellants were in process of returning the respondent to the port of Bombay in terms of their contract—that is, their contract of employment—and of the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, “he left the said s.s. ‘Circassia’ without leave and deserted his service.” Those terms are perfectly appropriate in describing the conduct of a seaman who after a temporary absence in hospital resumed his service on his former ship, did not like it, absented himself without leave, and committed the offence of desertion. They are absolutely inappropriate in describing what has been suggested at the bar—that is to say, the position of a person whose contract of employment has terminated, who has been brought without any great amount of acquiescence on his part back to his ship, and has been invited to proceed in her as a passenger to Bombay, and has then said that he does not like it, and would prefer to remain in Glasgow.
Page: 65↓
I wish to remind your Lordships that if he deserted, as it is found that he did, he was not only liable for an offence punishable by summary conviction, but under section 222 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 the master and owners were entitled to the services of the police, and were also entitled to use their own force in order to bring the man back to his ship and make him resume his service and proceed with the ship to sea. The Sheriff-Substitute misused language strangely if he said this man had “deserted”—that is to say, had committed an offence of that kind—if all that he had really done was to decline to take his passage by the ship that was tendered to him. It was also plainly assumed in the judgments below that his service continued, and that he was deserting in the true sense of the word, and the point argued and decided there was whether, in spite of his having broken his contract of service and not having brought it to an end, he could claim at his own hand to apply section 7 (l).( e) of the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 to his own advantage even although it conflicted with the corresponding section of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906.
I think probably the most important thing is to look at these two sections together. It is to be borne in mind that the two Acts of 1906 received the royal assent at the same time and on the same day, and that one was complementary to the other. The Workmen's Compensation Act provided for the terms on which seamen should be brought within the benefit of the Workmen's Compensation Act. The Merchant Shipping Act provided among other things for limitations upon that benefit which arose out of the special treatment systematically extended to seamen under all the Merchant Shipping Acts. Now here is a man whose service has not been brought to an end in the manner provided by the Merchant Shipping Acts with the formalities strictly prescribed under them. He has never received his discharge. He was not in fact left at Marseilles under circumstances that terminated his employment, or at anyrate it is not so found, and, on the contrary, it is found in my view that he was still in the employment of the ship. Under these circumstances he has sustained an accident. Now the weekly payment which in respect of that accident may be payable “shall not be payable in respect of the period during which the owner of the ship is, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, as amended by any subsequent enactment or otherwise, liable to defray the expenses of maintenance of the injured master, seaman, or apprentice.” Considering that those two pieces of legislation are absolutely coterminous, it seems to me that the natural construction is to treat the reference to the Merchant Shipping Act as amended as being a short way of inserting in the Workmen's Compensation Act the relevant provision, namely, section 34, sub-section (1), of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, for I will assume (as it has been assumed throughout) that it is section 34, sub-section (1), and not section 34, sub-section (2), which governs this case. I think the natural mode of reading that is to say that the weekly payment shall not be payable in respect of the period during which the owner of a ship, under the Merchant Shipping Act, whenever a seaman receives any hurt or injury in the service of the ship, is liable to defray the expense of attendance and medicine and the expenses of maintenance until he has returned to a proper return port without any deduction on that account from his wages. Although in the case of M'Dermott your Lordships' House was dealing with another question, I would quote the language of Lord Loreburn on page 39 of the report as expressing what I take to be the construction of these two sections read together—“Before 1906 the seaman was not within the Act. In 1906 the right to compensation for accidental injury was extended to seamen, and begins when the injured seaman ceases to be entitled to maintenance. It is clear that compensation is to begin exactly where the right to maintenance ends.” On that ground I think that this question does not depend upon what in particular circumstances a seaman might be able to sue for, or what might constitute a defence to a shipowner if he chose to set it up when sued. The reference to the Merchant Shipping Act is a mode of reading the two sections together. In view of the fact that the man was still in the service of the ship, in view of the fact that being in the service of the ship he was bound to render such service as he could in return for his wages, in view of the fact that the finding is that he was partially incapacitated, and as anybody can see who knows the sea there were many things he might have been employed to do, I think it is plain that on the one hand the owner was bound to pay wages and to defray all these various expenses, but on the other hand the seaman was bound to render services suitable to his state and capacity so far as he could. That being so, the Workmen's Compensation Act period had not begun, because the Merchant Shipping Act period had not terminated.
Suppose the right way to look at it is as your Lordships are minded to do, and to say that the word “liable” means liable in the particular circumstances of the case, I regret to see—doubtless it may be by inadvertence—that in more than one passage in the judgment in the Court below it has been assumed that it is possible for a seaman by breaking his contract and deserting his service to bring the contract to an end at his own hand either in whole or in part. I do not understand it to have been contended before your Lordships that that doctrine is really true. I understand the two propositions presented here to be, first of all, that the benefit, whether it arose under the contract or arose under the statute, the contract having terminated, was a benefit of a unilateral character which the seaman could waive at any time that he chose, or secondly, that the word “liable” in the Workmen's Compensation Act may have the effect of meaning that in this particular case the statute enacted that one party to a contract can at his own hand terminate reciprocal obligations in that contract without the
Page: 66↓
Their Lordships ordered that the judgment of the Court below be affirmed and the appeal dismissed with costs.
Counsel for the Appellants— Moncrieff, K.C.— Bernard Sandeman (the latter of the English Bar). Agents— Macpherson & Mackay, W.S., Edinburgh— John Kennedy & Company, W.S., Westminster.
Counsel for Respondent— Mackay, K.C.— Aitchison— Gillies. Agents— W. G. Leechman & Company, Glasgow and Edinburgh— D. Graham Pole, S.S.C., London.