APPEAL COURT

Hokitika Guardian, 2 October 1931, Page 2

APPEAL COURT

MR O’REGAN’S ARGUMENT. (By Telegraph—Per. Frets Association) WELLINGTON, October 1. In the case Bortliwick and Co. v, Ryan, in the Appeal Court, Mr P. J. o,Regan opened the case for the defendants. Mr O’Regan said that he was faced with the task of replying to formidable arguments, and he intimated that his argument would be a fairly long one. He presented three submissions for the consideration of the court as follows:

(l)That the Workers’ Compensation Act and the cases thereunder have given no meaning to the word “aocidout” that the word did not possess before the Act was passed. f'2) That if the case he otherwise within the Workers’ Compensation Act the fact that the origin of an accident was a thunderstorm, a gale or an earthquake was irrelevant. (3) That every person who was at work on the day of the earthquake lii a building, qunry, gravel pit. street or highway was exposed to a locality risk, and if killed or injured by accident, such case was within the Statute.

Answering the Chief Justice. Mr O’Regan said that every worker who —in the course of his employment—was injured during the earthquake was entitled to compensation.

Mr W. J. Luckie, who appeared in support said that it had been decided that the husband of his client, Mrs Aslnvell, was employed as porter ol the Clarendon Hotel, Napier, and was killed whilst on a message along Hastings Street for his employers. Ihe risk arose immediately out of his employment. He submitted that the risk to which the workers in Napier were subject was not a community risk common to all mankind, but was a risk limited to those who worked in brick buildings. The risk did not depend on the earthquake alone, but depended on the earthquake plus the brick buildings.