O'Hanlon v Electricity Supply Board

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1971
• Date: 01 January 1971
• Docket Number: [1965. No. 1389 P.]
• Court: Supreme Court

(S.C.)

O'Hanlon

and

Electricity Supply Board

Experienced electrician undertaking work without appropriate equipment but with full knowledge of obvious danger - Whether risk of injury to employee was foreseeable by employer - Defence - Volenti non fit injuria - New statutory defence now applicable - Mutually exclusive defences inadmissible -Civil Liability Act, 1961 (No. 41 of 1961), s. 34, sub-s. 1 (b).

Section 34, sub-s. 1, of the Civil Liability Act, 1961, provides for the reduction of the damages recoverable by a plaintiff where the injury suffered by him was caused partly by his own negligence. The sub-section also enacts at para. (b) that it shall not operate to defeat a defence that a plaintiff, before the act complained of, "agreed" to waive his legal rights in respect of the act but that, subject as aforesaid, the provisions of the sub-section shall apply although a defendant might, apart from the sub-section, have the defence of voluntary "assumption of risk." The plaintiff, an experienced electrician in the employment of the defendants, needed a particular fuse-extractor to carry out in the normal way, and without danger to himself, a task given to him by the defendants. Having failed to obtain the fuse-extractor, he could have refused to proceed further with his task or he could have removed three fuses from a nearby supply point which would have disconnected the electric current from several houses in the area, including the house in which he was working. The plaintiff proceeded with his task although he knew that, in these circumstances, he would have to work in close proximity to an uninsulated power line and that he was forbidden by his employers to do so. The plaintiff received an electric shock and suffered personal injuries. In an action in the High Court before a judge and jury in which the plaintiff claimed damages for the defendants' negligence, the defendants denied negligence and pleaded volenti non fit injuria in the customary form. The defendants at the trial adduced evidence to establish the fact that they had provided the plaintiff with the required fuse-extractor and they admitted negligence if that issue was found against them; they allowed that issue and the issue of volenti to go to the jury although the issue of volenti was based on the proposition that the fuse-extractor had not been furnished by the defendants. The jury found that the defendants had been negligent but that the plaintiff had undertaken, with full...