Mount Isa Mines Ltd v Pusey
125 CLR 383(Judgment by: MENZIES J)
Between: MOUNT ISA MINES LTD
And: PUSEY
Judges:
Barwick CJ
McTiernan J
Menzies JWindeyer J
Walsh J
Subject References:
Negligence
Duty of care
Damage
Nervous shock
Remoteness of damage
Judgment date: 23 December 1970
SYDNEY
Judgment by:
MENZIES J
This is an appeal from the judgment of the Supreme Court of Queensland (Skerman J.) in favour of the respondent (the plaintiff) against the appellant (the defendant) for $10,000 for personal injuries caused by the defendant's negligence.
An incident did happen in the defendant's powerhouse which, it is not now in dispute, was caused by the negligence of the defendant's management and of two of its employees who were electricians-Kuskopf and Docherty. The electricians, in the absence of proper instruction, made an incorrect electrical connection and so caused a short circuit which threw an arc of electricity in which an intensely high temperature was generated by which Kuskopf and Docherty were burned to death in a grisly manner. Kuskopf had all his clothes burned off and was himself blackened. He did not die immediately. The plaintiff, who was working upon another floor of the building, heard the noise of the explosion caused by the short-circuiting and ran up a connecting ladder to investigate what had happened. He saw Kuskopf in the condition I have described and went to his aid. He put his arm around him and helped him to walk through the powerhouse down a flight of steps to an ambulance. The plaintiff, as a result of this experience and after the passage of some time, suffered acute schizophrenia. It was for this condition that he sought and recovered damages.
The appellant's contention was that the risk of the injury which befell the respondent was one not reasonably foreseeable and, accordingly, the appellant owed the respondent no duty of care to safeguard him against it. The appellant's case, therefore, involved a major and a minor premise. The major premise was that the duty of an employer to an employee does not go beyond the taking of reasonable steps to protect the employee from the risk of injury of a kind which a reasonable employer would have foreseen. The minor premise was that the risk of the injury which here eventuated, i.e. the plaintiff's schizophrenia, was not of a kind which a reasonable employer would have foreseen.
I propose to decide this case upon the minor premise without considering whether the limited statement of the duty which was, it was argued, supported by observations in The "Wagon Mound" Case (No. 2) (Overseas Tankship (U.K.) Ltd v Miller Steamship Co Pty Ltd), [F6] is sufficiently comprehensive.
The learned trial judge said: [F7]
"In the present case I think that the creation of an electric arc of fire was reasonably foreseeable by an expert in this field in the event of a short circuit occurring through the negligence of a servant or agent of the defendant. If, as happened, intense heat was created it was foreseeable that electricians in the powerhouse would be injured and property damaged by fire and also that other employees in the building might go to the rescue and sustain burning injuries. It was also foreseeable in my view that in such case some employee might sustain gruesome burning injuries comparable with the horrible consequences of vehicles coming into collision (including on occasions death by fire as a result of the collision), with at least the possibility of shock and some form of mental illness or neurosis to an employee in the building or in that vicinity who went to the assistance of the person suffering burning injuries. It is the fact on the evidence in this case that a schizophrenic reaction was a rare and most exceptional occurrence as was the chronic psychiatric disability which ensued but nevertheless, in my judgment, it was `an injury of a class or character foreseeable as a possible result', as postulated in The "Wagon Mound" Case [No. 2].
...
I have come to the conclusion and find that the shock suffered by the plaintiff and its consequences were caused by the breach of the defendant's duty to the plaintiff and that the shock injury and the kind of illness that followed was of a kind or type which was reasonably foreseeable by the defendant in a general way with the result that I hold the defendant is liable to the plaintiff for damages, even though the extent of the damage was not foreseeable."
Because I have not found any sufficient ground for differing from these findings I am of the opinion that the appeal should be dismissed.