Weston v Great Boulder Gold Mines Ltd [1964] HCA 59; (1964) 112 CLR 30 (15 October 1964)

HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

WESTON v. GREAT BOULDER GOLD MINES LTD. [1964] HCA 59; (1964) 112 CLR 30

Workers' Compensation

High Court of Australia
Barwick C.J.(1), Kitto(2), Menzies(3), Windeyer(4) and Owen(5) JJ.

CATCHWORDS

Workers' Compensation - Personal injury by accident in the course of employment - Unexpected assault by intruder upon worker - Unconnected with employment - Workers' Compensation Act, 1912-1961 (W.A.), s. 7*.

HEARING

Perth, 1964, September 14;
Melbourne, 1964, October 15. 15:10:1964
APPEAL from the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

DECISION

October 15.
The following written judgments were delivered:-
BARWICK C.J. In this case I have had the advantage of reading the judgments to the fate of this appeal. I agree with the reasons they each advance for deciding that the appellant suffered an injury by accident in the course of his employment and do not desire to add anything myself to these reasons. However, I would find it unnecessary to decide in this case whether or not the appellant's injury arose out of his employment and, consequently, I say nothing at all on that question. I find no need myself to make any reservation as does Menzies J. as to what the result should be if the appellant had actually expected that at some time or other, or for that matter at his work, the man X would violently attack him. The precise nature and timing of the attack would, in my opinion, be none the less unexpected in the relevant sense. (at p34)

2. I agree that the questions should be answered: (1) No. (2)(a) Unnecessary to answer. (b) No and that the appeal should be allowed. (at p34)

KITTO J. I am of the same opinion and have nothing to add. (at p34)

MENZIES J. It has been established since Fenton v. Thorley & Co. Ltd.(1903) AC 443 that when a worker is injured in his employment by an unlooked-for mishap or an untoward event which is not expected or designed by the worker himself, there is injury by accident for the purposes of the Workers' Compensation Act: see Clover, Clayton & Co. Ltd. v. Hughes(1910) AC 242; Trim Joint District School Board of Management v. Kelly (1914) AC 667 and McGuire v Union Steamship Co of New Zealand(1920) [1920] HCA 37; 27 CLR 570 It has recently been decided by this Court that when a worker is so injured while he is working, injury by accident arises in the course of his employment: see Kavanagh v. The Commonwealth(1960) [1960] HCA 25; 103 CLR 547 (at p34)

2. Here the appellant, a workman employed by the respondent, was deliberately assaulted by an intruder in the respondent's mine when the worker got down from the rail vehicle which he was driving to change the points on the rails. The incident which had given the intruder a grudge against the appellant had occurred some time before the assault and was a personal matter not in any way related to his employment. The Workers' Compensation Board awarded compensation but, upon a case stated, the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Western Australia by a majority (Wolff C.J. and Jackson J., Negus J. dissenting) answered questions as follows:- "1. Q. Did the Board err in law in holding that the applicant suffered personal injury by accident? A. Yes. 2. Q. If the answer to 1 is 'No', did the Board err in law in holding: (a) that such injury by accident did not arise out of the applicant's employment, and/or (b) that such injury by accident arose in the course of the applicant's employment? A. (a) No. (b) Yes". (at p35)

3. Although Mr. Hartrey for the appellant did submit that the appellant had suffered injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, I think this appeal can be disposed of by considering two questions: (i) whether personal injury by accident was caused to the worker and, if so, (ii) whether that personal injury by accident arose in the course of the worker's employment. (at p35)

4. It is possible to deal with the second question very shortly for, if the appellant's injury was injury by accident, then Kavanagh's Case [1960] HCA 25; (1960) 103 CLR 547 compels the conclusion that as it happened while he was working, it was injury by accident arising in the course of his employment. (at p35)

5. The submission that the appellant's injury was not injury by accident was supported by two arguments. First it was argued that it was not an accidental injury because it was designed by someone, in this case the attacker, and the nature of the employment was not such as to expose the worker to the risk of deliberate assault. Secondly, it was argued that the worker actually expected the attack that was in fact made upon him. (at p35)

6. I reject the first argument because I do not think that the decision of the House of Lords in Kelly's Case (1914) AC 667 , that injury by deliberate assault was injury by accident, depended upon some conclusion that the nature of Kelly's employment as a school teacher carried with it a special risk of assault from his pupils. As I read the judgment of the majority of the House of Lords, the conclusion upon the question whether or not Kelly's death was injury by accident would have been the same had he been killed by somebody entirely unconnected with the school. Thus Viscount Haldane L.C. said: "My Lords, if the object of this statute be as wide as I gather from the study of its language, its construction must, as it appears to me, be that accident includes any injury which is not expected or designed by the workman himself. If so the Court of Appeal in England was right in its decision in Nisbet v. Rayne (1910) 2 KB 689 that the definition extended to a case of death by murder, and the Court of Appeal in Ireland was right in Anderson v. Balfour (1910) 2 JR 497, and in the present case, in taking a similar view of the meaning of 'accident'. To take a different view appears to me to amount, in the language of Mathew L.J. in Challis v. London and South Western Railway Co.(1905) 2 KB 154, to the reading into the Act of a proviso that an accident is not to be deemed within it if it arises from the mischievous act of a person not in the service of the employer" (1914) AC, at p 679 Lord Shaw said: "When, over and over again, it is announced that the words of the Workmen's Compensation Act must be construed according to their ordinary and popular signification, I entirely agree; but I think it is surely part of that popular and ordinary signification that for seventy years in England the word 'accident' has been publicly and descriptively used as inclusive of occurrences intentionally caused" (1914) AC, at p 708 Lord Reading said: "Construing the words in their ordinary and popular sense, I think they mean an injury caused to the workman by some sudden and unexpected occurrence, whether the injury was inflicted by design or otherwise, as distinguished from an injury caused to him by some gradual process" (1914) AC, at p 720 (at p36)

7. It is true that in some of the speeches, particularly that of Earl Loreburn, some emphasis was laid upon the nature of the worker's employment. Thus his Lordship said: "Again, the same thing, when occurring to a man in one kind of employment, would not be called accident, but would be so described if it occurred to another not similarly employed. A soldier shot in battle is not killed by accident, in common parlance. An inhabitant trying to escape from the field might be shot by accident. It makes all the difference that the occupation of the two was different" (1914) AC, at p 681 It is hardly to be inferred, however, that Earl Loreburn was intimating that it would be accident if a school teacher were to be killed by his pupils but not if he were to be killed by a marauder. It might indeed be that there would have been a greater element of the accidental had the deliberate assault been made by an outsider rather than by undisciplined pupils. (at p36)

8. In many of the reported cases (for example, Challis v. London and South Western Railway Co.(1905) 2 KB 154; Nisbet v. Rayne(1910) 2 KB 689 and Kelly's Case (1914) AC 667 itself) the question at issue was not simply whether there was injury by accident; it was rather whether there was, or perhaps whether there was evidence of, injury by accident arising out of a worker's employment. In these circumstances it was inevitable that emphasis should be laid upon the nature of the employment and the risk inherent in it to discover whether what happened could be found to have arisen out of the employment. (at p37)

9. Although Mr. Wilson submitted the argument that the respondent expected the attack that was made upon him, he did so with less than his customary enthusiasm. The finding he relied upon was as follows: "Mr. X" (the attacker) "twice attacked the applicant's friend, apparently in the manner of a normal fight, and was heard to threaten retaliation against the applicant and his brother. The applicant did not actually hear these threats made but was told of them. He was not apprehensive that an attack against him would, if made, be inconsistent in manner from that made against his friend". In my opinion this finding does not amount to one that the appellant expected a murderous attack to be made upon him at work. Were it such a finding I would have to consider whether that expectation would have meant that the appellant's injury was not injury by accident for the purposes of the Act but, as it is, I simply reserve that point. (at p37)

10. For the foregoing reasons I consider that the appeal should be allowed and the questions answered- (1) No. (2)(a) Unnecessary to answer. (b) No. (at p37)

WINDEYER J. Is a man who is injured, when at work, by a blow given in the course of a purely private quarrel entitled to compensation from his employer? Their Honours who comprised the majority of the Supreme Court thought not. Their decision was, I think, the understandable result of a lingering sense of the policy and purpose which led originally to the system of workers' compensation, and of a feeling that this policy and purpose ought still to govern the operation of the present statutes on the topic. But I think their Honours' view did not fully take into account how great, perhaps one may say how illogical, has been the departure from earlier principles that later statutes have made and how drastically earlier doctrine must be discarded. (at p37)

2. The system of workers' compensation, which began in England with the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897, was founded upon a policy that had not theretofore had a place in the law. A person who was incapacitated by what is now commonly called an industrial accident or by an industrial disease was to be compensated by his employer, who must insure against his having to do so. In effect the employer was to insure his workers against personal injury by accident. Industry, meaning in an economic sense the consumers of the products of industry, was thus made to compensate the victims of accidents and ailments which resulted from the risks and hazards that it had created. The system was in a sense a belated by-product of the industrial revolution: agricultural workers were not at first entitled to its benefits. The underlying concept was expressed in the phrase "personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment". Industrial diseases were by statutory provisions artificially assimilated to traumatic injuries as above described. The whole system being founded upon the risks to life and limb and health to which workers in industry were subjected, many of the earlier decisions reflect a view that an injury which was the result of some untoward event not within the ordinary hazards of the particular employment was outside the scope of the legislation. Such findings were sometimes put upon the ground that the occurrence was not an "accident", sometimes that it did not "arise out of and in the course of the employment". (at p38)

3. The phrase "by accident arising out of and in the course of employment" was in the continuing process of judicial interpretation analysed into its subordinate elements, "arising out of", "arising in the course of", "accident" and "employment". There is no need now to survey the decisions which exemplify this interpretation by fragmentation. In 1931 Viscount Dunedin said that it had then become beyond controversy that an applicant for compensation must make out as separate matters that there was an accident, that it arose out of his employment, and that it arose in the course of his employment: see Simpson v. London, Midland and Scottish Railway Co. (1931) AC 351. Decisions refusing compensation to workers who had failed to surmount one or other of the several obstacles created by words thus dissociated and considered separately led to the Australian States amending their statutes to remove the impediments that the courts had revealed. They did this in various ways, with the result that the words in which a compensable injury is described are not now the same in every State. The main amendment has been an elimination of the requirement that to be compensable the injury must arise both out of and in the course of the employment: these have been made alternatives by the substitution of "or" for "and". Some States have gone further and removed the word "accident". The statute with which we are here concerned is the Workers' Compensation Act, 1912-1961 of Western Australia. The relevant provision makes compensation payable "if in any employment personal injury by accident arising out of or in the course of the employment is caused to a worker". The result is that instead of a single phrase bringing within the Act an accident of the kind it described - each component of the composite description taking some colour from its context - there are now two descriptions, of quite different kinds of accidents each of which is brought within the Act, the description of one taking no colour from that of the other except by contrast. (at p39)

4. The question referred to the Supreme Court by the Workers' Compensation Board proceeds on the assumption that one first enquires whether there was an accident; and secondly if there were, whether it answered either description - out of or in the course of the employment. As I have said, this way of approaching the matter has the sanction now of authority, although all the decisions are not easily reconcilable and all do not seem to follow the same path. In this case the answer to the first question posed in that way must, I think, be Yes. Notwithstanding the powerful dissents of Lord Dunedin, Lord Atkinson and Lord Parker of Waddington, the decision of the House of Lords in Trim Joint District School Board of Management v. Kelly (1914) AC 667 seems to me to compel that answer. Admittedly the event was not of a kind that one would ordinarily expect might occur in the employment in which the appellant was engaged. Such a happening was not one of the ordinary hazards of that employment. Therefore, if the Western Australian Act still spoke of an accident arising out of and in the course of employment, it may well be that the employer would not be liable for the consequences of the accident in this case. But as the law now stands he is liable if the accident arose in the course of the employment. And that requirement, separately regarded, was I think satisfied here. In Kavanagh's Case [1960] HCA 25; (1960) 103 CLR 547 I gave my reasons for thinking that a happening that would have befallen a man as it did and when it did wherever he was and whatever he was doing at the time - for example the onset or climax of an illness, the unexpected result of the shock of bad news - does not occur in the course of his employment merely because when it strikes him he is at work. I did not think that the expression "in the course of employment" could mean simply "while at work". So to read it in workers' compensation law would I thought be to give it a meaning that was inconsistent with the meaning that it, and similar expressions such as "in the course of business", had had in the law long before the system of workers' compensation began; and it would, I thought, divert workers' compensation law far from its purpose. I find it hard to rid myself of the opinion that I held and there expressed. But it is not that which the majority of this Court there held. As I understand their judgments, anything at all that happens to a man while he is at work happens in the course of his employment; and if it happens unexpectedly it is an accident in the course of the employment. That is enough to dispose of this case. I should however add that, even adhering to the view I had, I would still think that according to earlier decisions what happened to the appellant here must be taken to have happened in the course of his employment. This is not a case where the incident that occurred would have happened as it did and when it did without the aid of any circumstance of the employment or the place of employment. Of course he might have been assaulted in some other way at some other time and place. But that would have been a different accident. The assault as actually made upon him, the accident that in fact caused the injury, was made possible because his employment had taken him into the mine. (at p40)

5. I would allow the appeal and say that the Board could properly find that, in the words of the Act, personal injury by accident arising in the course of employment was caused to the appellant. (at p40)

OWEN J. This is an appeal by special leave from a decision of the Full Supreme Court of Western Australia (Wolff C.J., Jackson and Negus JJ.) on certain questions referred to that Court by the Workers' Compensation Board under s. 29(9) of the Workers' Compensation Act, 1912-1961. (at p40)

2. The appellant, the applicant for compensation, was employed by the respondent as a locomotive driver in its mine. On 25th April 1962 while working underground in the mine, performing the duties which he was engaged to perform, he was assaulted and seriously injured by another of the respondent's employees who was referred to in the proceedings as X. X was not on duty at the time and should not have been in the mine. The assault was the result of an incident entirely unconnected with the appellant's employment which had occurred some weeks earlier and in the course of it X had threatened to do violence to the appellant and two other men who were with him at the time. The Workers' Compensation Board was of opinion that the appellant had suffered personal injury by accident, that the injury did not "arise out of" the appellant's employment by the respondent but that it had arisen "in the course of" that employment and it referred to the Full Court of the Supreme Court the questions whether it had erred in law in holding that the appellant had suffered personal injury by accident and, if it had not, whether it had erred in law in holding that the injury did not "arise out of" but did arise "in the course of" the appellant's employment. (at p41)

3. In the Supreme Court Wolff C.J. and Jackson J. were of opinion that the Board had erred in law in holding that the appellant had suffered personal injury by accident. Their Honours considered also that the injury could not be said to have arisen "in the course of" the appellant's employment. Negus J. was of the contrary opinion on both these points. The members of the Court were unanimous, however, in thinking that the Board had rightly held that the appellant's injury had not arisen out of his employment and on this last matter their decision was plainly correct. (at p41)

4. Section 7(1) of the Workers' Compensation Act of Western Australia provides that compensation shall be paid "if in any employment personal injury by accident arising out of or in the course of the employment . . . is caused to a worker". In the form in which the provision was originally enacted, compensation was payable in respect of personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the worker's employment and as the law then stood, a worker who had suffered personal injury by accident was required to establish not only that it had arisen "out of" his employment but also that it had arisen "in the course of" that employment. The effect of the substitution of the word "or" for "and" was discussed by this Court in Kavanagh v. The Commonwealth [1960] HCA 25; (1960) 103 CLR 547 . Dixon C.J. pointed out that in Pearson's Case [1929] HCA 19; (1929) 42 CLR 320 the Court had said that the condition that the injury should arise "in the course of" the employment was "satisfied if the accident happens while the workman is doing something in the exercise of his functions although it is no more than an adjunct to or an incident of his service" (1960) 103 CLR, at p 556 ; and, on the following page, his Honour went on, "It is possible that those who substituted 'or' for 'and' were not alive to the consequences of the change and in particular to the manner in which the alternative 'or in the course of the employment' might operate to compensate sufferers from injuries unconnected with industry if and only if the injuries occurred during working hours" (1960) 103 CLR, at p 557 . Fullagar J. said: "But what does emerge from a consideration of the cases" (that is to say of the cases decided at a time when the word "and" and not "or" appeared) "is, I think, the significant fact that the effect of requiring a causal connexion between employment and injury is always attributed to the words 'out of' and not to the words 'in the course of'. (The words 'out of' do indeed import causation: the words 'in the course of' do not.) The conclusion seems inevitable that the main object of the changing of the conjunction was to eliminate the necessity of finding such a causal connexion. If there was such a causal connexion, the injury was to be compensable even though it did not occur while the worker was engaged in his employment or anything incidental to his employment. If, on the other hand, the injury occurred in the course of the employment, it was to be compensable even though no causal connexion could be found between it and the employment. And it necessarily follows, I think, that the words 'arising in the course of his employment' ought not to be regarded as meaning anything more or less than 'arising while the worker is engaged in his employment'" (1960) 103 CLR, at pp 558, 559 Menzies J. said: ". . . it is abundantly clear that in the composite phrase" (that is to say before the word "or" was substituted for "and") "the words 'in the course of' were regarded as signifying no more than that the worker must be doing something that was part of or incidental to his service. This being so, it seems to me that when the conjunctive was dropped for the disjunctive, the result was to entitle the worker to compensation if no more is shown than that the personal injury by accident arose while he was doing something that was part of or incidental to his service" (1960) 103 CLR, at p 576. More recently what was said in Kavanagh's Case [1960] HCA 25; (1960) 103 CLR 547 was applied in The Commonwealth v. Oliver [1962] HCA 38; (1962) 107 CLR 353, although in that case there was a difference of opinion whether the worker, at the time when he received his injury, was engaged in an activity incidental to his employment. (at p42)

5. In the light of the passages from the judgments in Kavanagh's Case(1960) [1960] HCA 25; 103 CLR 547 quoted above there is no longer room for the notion that the words "in the course of the employment" require the proof of some causal connexion between the employment and the injury. It is sufficient if the injury occurs while the worker is performing the work he is engaged to do or is doing something reasonably incidental to that work and, with all respect to the views of the majority of the Full Court, I am of opinion that the Workers' Compensation Board rightly found that the appellant's injuries arose "in the course of" his employment. (at p42)

6. There remains the question whether the appellant suffered "personal injury by accident" having regard to the fact that his injuries were intentionally inflicted upon him by his assailant. In Fenton v. J. Thorley & Co. Ltd. (1903) AC 443, at p 448, a case under the English Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897, Lord Macnaghten defined the word "accident", as used in the Act, to mean "an unlooked-for mishap or an untoward event which is not expected or designed" and that definition has since been accepted and applied in England (see for example Clover, Clayton & Co. Ltd. v. Hughes (1910) AC 242 and in Australia in McGuire v. Union Steamship Co. of New Zealand [1920] HCA 37; (1920) 27 CLR 570. It left open, however, the question whether an injury resulting from an event not expected or designed by the person injured but done deliberately by another for the purpose of causing injury could properly be described as a personal injury by accident. The answer to that question was finally settled in Trim Joint District School Board of Management v. Kelly(1914) AC 667 in which the majority of the House of Lords held that "not expected or designed" meant "not expected or designed by the workman himself". Decisions to the same effect had been given earlier, for example, in Challis v. London and South Western Railway Co. (1905) 2 KB 154 where an engine driver, whilst driving a train, was injured by a stone wilfully dropped from an overhead bridge, and in Nisbet v. Rayne (1910) 2 KB 689, where a cashier carrying money to pay his employer's workmen was robbed and murdered. In each case it was held that there had been "personal injury by accident". The same view was taken by this Court in McGuire's Case [1920] HCA 37; (1920) 27 CLR 570 Isaacs and Rich JJ. said: "the workman's status is the governing standpoint" (1920) 27 CLR, at p 587, and Gavan Duffy and Starke JJ. put it more plainly: "'Unexpected' means unexpected by the person suffering the injury, not by the person inflicting it"(1920) 27 CLR, at p 591 In the present case Wolff C.J. considered that in what he called the "assault cases", the worker's claim could succeed "only where the particular type of employment was such as to involve the risk of assault, or where the assault might be said to result from some argument or altercation with a fellow worker in relation to the worker's job". He instanced the case of a bank teller injured by a robber, or a worker assaulted by his foreman who was remonstrating about the former's work. The learned Chief Justice no doubt based his opinion upon passages to be found in the speech of Earl Loreburn in Trim's Case (1914) AC 667 which undoubtedly afford support for that proposition. But, with great respect, it is difficult to see how the fact that the type of employment in which the worker is engaged is one which is accompanied by the risk of being assaulted or otherwise intentionally injured by another can be relevant in considering whether there has been an "injury by accident". Rather would one think that the greater the risk of such a happening in a particular kind of employment, the more likely that it would be expected by a worker. No doubt the fact that a particular type of employment carries with it the risk that a worker may be assaulted while performing his duties is a material fact in determining whether or not an injury thus caused arose "out of" his employment. This was the view taken by several of their Lordships in Trim's Case (1914) AC 667 and, with respect, I agree with it. But a proposition that would mean that a clerk working in the office of a warehouse who is there attacked and injured by an intruder does not suffer "personal injury by accident" but that a nightwatchman on duty in the same warehouse who is attacked and injured by the same intruder does suffer "personal injury by accident" cannot be accepted. (at p44)

7. In the course of his argument, counsel for the respondent suggested, somewhat faintly, that in the present case the assault should not be regarded as an event unexpected by the appellant because X had earlier threatened him with violence and that for this reason it was not proved that he had suffered injury by accident. It is plain that, notwithstanding that earlier threat, the time, place and nature of the assault was, from the point of view of the appellant, completely unexpected. But even if the appellant had thought it possible or even probable that he would be attacked while at work, I would have regarded him as having suffered personal injury by accident within Lord Macnaghten's definition. (at p44)

8. For these reasons I am of opinion that the Worker's Compensation Board made no error of law and that each of the questions should have been answered "No". (at p44)

ORDER

Appeal allowed with costs. Order of Supreme Court set aside and in lieu thereof order that the questions asked by the Workers' Compensation Board be answered as follows:-

1. No.
2. (a) Unnecessary to answer.
(b) No.