Kavanagh v Alliance and Dublin Consumers' Gas Company

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1948
• Date: 01 January 1948
• Court: Supreme Court

(S.C.),

Kavanagh

and

Alliance and Dublin Consumers' Gas Company

-Work carried out by respondents in vicinity of work being carried out by employees of other employers - Huts provided by respondents and other employers for convenience of their respective employees - Accident to workman while using other employers' hut for his own purposes during midday break - Voluntary payments by respondents - Receipts stating "having elected to take compensation . . . . for the accident I met with when engaged in" respondents' employment - No judgment or registered agreement -Whether any binding admission of liability by respondents - Workmen's Compensation Act, 1934 (No. 9 of 1934), ss. 15, 36.

Applicant was one of a number of workmen in the employ of the respondents who were engaged in examining gas mains in a public roadway on the 15th July, 1943. Workmen employed by the Dublin Corporation were at the same time engaged in work connected with sewers laid in the said roadway. A hut was provided on the roadway by the respondents in which their workmen's tools might be kept and in which their workmen might shelter during the interval for their midday meal. A similar hut had been provided by the Corporation for the use of their workmen, the distance between the two huts being 400 yards. At the midday break the applicant and other workmen of the respondents had his lunch at the hut provided by the Corporation, and afterwards rested beside a cement dump, the property of the Corporation. While so resting some bags of cement fell from the dump upon him and caused serious injuries. He received two payments of compensation, and put his mark to a receipt in respect of them. Subsequent payments were made to his wife. Receipts signed by her, as well as those marked by the applicant, recited that he, "having elected to take compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Acts, 1925 to 1940,"agreed to accept during total disablement the weekly sum of 37s. 6d. in satisfaction of the compensation payable by the respondents in respect of the accident. On the 4th November, 1943, the respondents discontinued the said weekly payments, and the...