McNamara v Electricity Supply Board

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: Supreme Court
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1975
• Docket Number: [1965. No. 1745 P.]
• Date: 01 January 1975

(S.C.)

McNamara

and

Electricity Supply Board

Child - Electricity Sub-station - Allurement - Adjoining housing estate - Damages - Statutory duty - Electricity Regulations, 1932 (S.R. O. No. 7), art. 30 -Factories Act, 1955 (No. 10), ss. 8, 71.

The defendants were the occupiers of an electricity sub-station in an urban area. The sub-station was surrounded by a chain-link wire fence on which were placed numerous notices which gave warning of danger. The defendants became aware of the fact that local children were in the habit of playing in the immediate vicinity of the sub-station and the defendants started to build a wall around the sub-station. In the course of the building of the wall, the defendants placed part of the fence close to the sub-station. The plaintiff, a boy aged 11 years, climbed the fence at this point and from the top of it reached the flat roof of the sub-station across a gap of less than three feet. In order to descend to the ground, the plaintiff started to clamber down a vertical drain-pipe and, while doing so, one of his hands came into contact with an uninsulated conductor which carried 10,000 volts and which was on the outside of the sub-station. The plaintiff suffered severe injuries; it was necessary to amputate one of his arms above the elbow and to amputate the other below the elbow. On several occasions the plaintiff had been warned not to go near the sub-station. The plaintiff could read and he had seen the notices, but he said that he had not read the notices and that he did not know that the sub-station was a dangerous place. At the hearing of the plaintiff's action in the High Court, where he claimed damages for the alleged negligence of the defendants, the jury found that the defendants had been negligent and that the plaintiff had not been negligent; the jury awarded the plaintiff the sum of £74,772 as damages, including the sum of £40,000 as general damages. The defendants appealed against the findings on the issues of negligence and against the award of damages. The plaintiff cross-appealed against the refusal of the trial judge to leave to the jury a question on the liability of the defendants for breach of statutory duty under the Electricity Regulations, 1932. Held, by the Supreme Court (FitzGerald C.J., Walsh, Budd, Henchy and Griffin JJ.), in allowing the appeal and directing a retrial, 1, (FitzGerald C.J. dissenting) that the issue of the defendants'...