The Gazette 1991

DECEMBER 1991

GAZETTE

Injury Too Remote From Employer The Court of Appeal (England and Wales) (Mustill, Mann and Farquharson LJJ) (The Times Law Report of October 23 1991) held that an employer in England who sent an employee to work as a computer consultant in Saudi Arabia was not to be held liable for an injury to the employee resulting from a fall on defective flooring at his workplace there. The Court held that although circumstances might well require home-based employers to satisfy themselves as to the safety of foreign sites, it would not be reasonable to hold reliable employers in breach of their duty of care because of a hazard created by others some 8,000 miles away. Farquharson LJ for the court said that both the trial judge and counsel for the employee cast far too high a responsibility on the employers. The site occupiers and the general contractors were reliable companies and aware of their responsibility for the safety of workers on site. The suggestion that the home-based employers had any responsibility for the daily events of a site in Saudi Arabia had an air of unreality. It might be that in some cases where a number of employees were going to work on a foreign site or where one or two employees were called on to work there for a considerable period of time, an employer might be required to inspect the site and satisfy himself that the occupiers were conscious of their obligations concerning the safety of people working there. But one could not prescribe any rules in that context. It would depend on the facts of individual cases. The evidence in the case before the court did not show that the accident was caused by any breach of duty on the employers' part.

The Medico-Legal Society of Ireland Programme for Winter/Spring 1992 1. Thursday 23rd January, 1992: Dr. Anne Clancy - "The Presidential Address" 2. Thursday 27th February, 1992: Professor Michael Gibney, Department of Clinical Nutrition, Trinity College, Dublin - "The Right to Eat Wrongly" 3. Thursday 26th March, 1992: Professor John Harbison, State Pathologist - "The Sevilla Project" Lectures take place at 8.30p.m. at the United Service Club, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, by kind permission. Members and their guests are invited to join the Council and guest speakers for dinner at the Club at 6p.m. for 6.30p.m. on the evening of each lecture. Members intending to dine must communicate, not later than the previous day, with Miss Mary MacMurrough Murphy, B.L. at 2 Wh i t ebeam Road, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14 (Telephone 269428Q) or at the Law Library, Four Courts, Dublin 7 (Telephone 720622). Membership of the Society is open to members of the medical and legal professions and to others especially interested in medico- legal matters. The current annual subscription is £10.00. Member- ship proposal forms and full details may be obtained f rom Mary MacMurrough Murphy at the above address. •

Lee should then have considered whether he could properly tell Mr. Edwards anything at all. His Lordship had no evidence that those matters crossed Mr. Lee's mind. Solicitor contributory negligence was established at 50 per cent. The court held that the defendant solicitor was liable to the third plaintiff for £12,250.

No Privilege for Company Officer

Vinelott J of the (UK) Chancery Division in Re Jeffrey S. Levitt Ltd (The Times Law Report, November 6, 1991) held that an officer of an insolvent company, if summoned to appear before the court to be examined under section 236 of the (UK) Insolvency Act, 1986 could not refuse to answer questions on the ground t hat they mi ght incriminate him, because he was under an overriding statutory duty to assist the receivers in their functions. Vinelott J so held in ordering such an examination of Mr Jeffrey S. Levitt, formerly the controlling director of Jeffrey S. Levitt Ltd, to be resumed before a judge of the Chancery Division. The Court stated t hat the Insolvency Acts of 1985 and 1986 were the outcome of a radical overhaul of both individual and corporate insolvency law following the Report of the Review Committee on Insolvency Law and Practice (Cmnd 8558), with special reference to the need to discourage insolvent trading and to disqualify delinquent directors. The court considered that if section 236 of the (UK) Insolvency Act, 1986 was read in the context of sections 234 and 235, it was clear that those sections established a class of persons on whom was laid a duty to furnish all relevant information to such as the present receivers; so Mr. Levitt had not been entitled to invoke the privilege.

I or a lull range ol Company Secretarial S i n ict's contact: KOMSKC L IM1T11)

17 Katlitai nham K O.K I . Tirimiri'. Dublin 6\\. Icl I a\: 903237

Eamonn Hall

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