#6615 - Jones V. Livox Quarries - Commercial Remedies BCL

Jones v. Livox Quarries

Facts

In a quarry at the lunch hour the workmen and a few slowmoving vehicles were proceeding down the base of the quarry to the canteen. The way was round a stationary excavator vehicle, turning almost at a right angle. A traxcavator, a tracked vehicle with a speed of 2 miles an hour turned this corner and stopped or nearly stopped to change gear. The plaintiff had jumped on to this vehicle and then stood on the towbar at the back of it holding on to two uprights very much in the position in which a footman stood at the back of an eighteenth century carriage, so that some part of his body was behind the traxcavator. The workmen at the quarry, including the plaintiff, had been instructed not to ride on the quarry vehicles and, in doing so, the plaintiff acted in defiance of his orders. A dumper, a vehicle with a speed of 4 to 5 miles an hour driven by a servant of the defendants, the quarry owners, with a load of stone, followed the traxcavator a few seconds later round the stationary excavator and crashed into the back of the traxcavator and the plaintiff was severely injured.

Holding

Singleton LJ

When one is considering the question of contributory negligence, it is not necessary to show that the negligence constituted a breach of duty to the defendant. It is sufficient to show lack of reasonable care by the plaintiff for his own safety. That is set out clearly in the speech of Lord Atkin in Caswell v. Powell Duffryn Associated Collieries Ld., as follows: 'But the injury may be the result of two causes operating at the same time, a breach of duty by the defendant and the omission on the part of the plaintiff to use the ordinary care for the protection of himself or his property that is used by the ordinary reasonable man in those circumstances. In that case the plaintiff cannot recover because the injury is partly caused by what is imputed to him as his own default.

The plaintiff, in riding on the traxcavator, was disobeying the orders of his employers. In so doing he was exposing himself to danger. It may well be that the chief danger was that he might fall off, or be thrown off, or that he might become entangled in some part of the machine on which he was riding; but those were not the only risks to which he subjected himself. He had put himself in a dangerous position which, in fact, exposed him to the particular danger which came upon him. He ought not to have been there. The fact that he was in that particular position meant that he exposed himself, or some part of his body, to another risk, the risk that some driver following might not be able to pull up in time - it may be because that driver was certainly at fault. That is the view which the trial judge took of this case, and I do not see that that is a wrong view. It is not so much a question of Was the plaintiff's conduct the cause of the accident? as Did it contribute to the accident? on the assumption that it was something of a kind which a reasonably careful man so placed would not have done. If he unreasonably, or improperly, exposed himself to this particular risk, I do not think that he ought to be allowed to say that it was not a cause operating to produce the damage, even though one may think that the prohibition against riding on the vehicle was not made with that particular risk in mind.

Denning LJ

It can now be safely asserted that the doctrine of last opportunity is obsolete; and also that contributory negligence does not depend on the existence of a duty. But the troublesome problem of causation still remains to be solved.

Once negligence is proved, then no matter whether it is actionable negligence or contributory negligence, the person who is guilty of it must bear his proper share of responsibility for the consequences. The consequences do not depend on foreseeability, but on causation. The question in every case is: What faults were there which caused the...