IMPORTANT APPEAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 590, 22 July 1933, Page 5

IMPORTANT APPEAL

(Press Assn.—

reserved judgment in tauranga case POWER BOARD INVOLVED

-By Telegraph — Copyright)

Wellington, Friday. In the case of Vineent v. the Taurahga Electric Power Board, heard before the Court of Appeal on June 22, the Court this morning delivered reserved judgment, dismissing the appeal of Vineent and allowing the cross-appeal of the Tauranga Electric Power Board. The Chief Justice. pointed out that appellant declared on two causes of action — first, that the board was under an absolute dnty to the appellant to comply with all of the electrical supply regulations of 1927, and that it had not done so, in consequence. whereof he had received injury; and secondly that there had been a breach by the board of the contract of employment under which he had been employed. After dealing at length with those causes of action the Chief Justice concluded his judgment as follows: — "It seems to me that however the action he framed Section 127 of the Electric Power Boards Act, .of 1925, applies. I have some diflficulty in seeing how plaintiff in any case can very well say that there is to be implied in the contract of employment a term that the regulations made under the Statute will be complied with, or how he can claim at all, exce.pt as in such cases as Groves v. Winbourne, for a breach of the statutory duty which the board owed to him I have, however, assumed the possibility of plaintiff being able to frame his action as for breach of contract, but, even so, for reasons that. I have given, 1 think that Section 127 .of the Act applies." Mr. Justice Herdman, in his judgment, said he had no doubt that the eommission upon which appellant found his case arose out of the direct execution of a statute or in the discharge of a public duty, and that, therefore, the appeal should be dismissed and the cross-appeal allowed. Mr. Justice MacGregor and Mr. Justice Kennedy were also of opinion that Vineent was barred by virtue of the provisions of Section 127. Costs on the highest scale as from a distance were allowed to The Power Board. In this case Frederick Charles Vineent sued the Tauranga Electric Power Board. Vineent, while in the employment of the board in 1930, and working on a transformer at Te Puke, came into contact with a live electric wire and was seriously burned and severely injured. Subsequently he claim ed £3477 damages from the board, basing his action on an alleged implied contract of employment between him and the board, incorporating an obligation to comply with the electrical supply regulations,^ which he alleged, had been broken by' the board, and on a breach of abso-« lute statutory duty on the part of the board of the supply regulations. In reply to this claim the board pleaded that the action was -barred by sectio.n 127 of the Electric Power Boards Act, as it was not commenced within six months of the. injury.