A soldier of the permanent forces served in the Training Centre, Bandiana Military Camp, Victoria, where he lived, upon duties concerned with the checking and logging of trucks and tanks coming in for repair, and was liable to be rostered for other camp duties but unless SO rostered was off-duty from 4.30 p.m. until 7.25 a.m. on the following day and from 4.30 p.m. on each Friday until 7.25 on the following Monday morning. On a Saturday morning, not having been SO rostered, the soldier proceeded to and arrived at Albury distant some eight miles from the camp. At 6.45 that evening, while walking on the Murray Valley Highway towards, and some two miles distant from,
venient route for the journey and does Employees' Compensation Act 1930-
not include travelling during or after 1954 provides -
any substantial interruption of the journey or any substantial deviation " 9A. - (1.) Where personal injury by accident is caused to an employee
unconnected with the employee's while he is travelling to or from-(a) his
employment, attendance at the school employment by the Commonwealth
or obtaining the certificate, treatment (including any school in relation to
or compensation, as the case may be which sub-section (2.) of the last pre-
Provided that the Commissioner may, ceding section applies);
on behalf of the Commonwealth, monwealth shall, subject to this Act,
accept liability, if he considers that in be liable to pay compensation in accord-
the circumstances of any particular ance with this Act as if the accident
case the nature, extent, degree and were an accident arising out of or in
content of the risk of accident was not the course of his employment.
materially changed or increased by (2.) In this section, travelling
reason only of any such interruption means travelling by the shortest con-
the camp he was run down by a motor car and killed. A claim by the soldier's mother, a widow, for compensation under S. 9A of the Commonwealth Employees' Compensation Act 1930-1954 was disallowed by the commissioner's delegate. Upon an appeal against that decision heard in the Sydney Metro- politan District Court the judge found that at the time of the accident the soldier was "travelling to his employment by the shortest convenient route allowed the appeal and awarded £750 compensation to the mother. The Commonwealth appealed to the High Court as of right.
Held, by Webb, Fullagar and Kitto JJ. (Dixon C.J. and McTiernan J. dis- senting), that it was not proved that at the time of the accident the…
Grounds of appeal
[14] The appellant contends that the primary judge erred in finding that the respondent had discharged the onus of establishing the matters required under the relevant provision.
[15] It was submitted that his Honour failed to give adequate weight to the evidence of the second witness, and that the findings of fact were not reasonably open on the material before the Court.
[16] The respondent, for its part, submits that no error is disclosed, and that the conclusions reached were well within the range of outcomes available to the primary judge.
Consideration
[17] It is convenient to deal first with the question of construction, as the resolution of that issue informs the remaining grounds advanced by the appellant.
[18] For the reasons that follow, we are of the view that the appeal should be allowed in part and the matter remitted for further determination.
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Details
AGLC
Commonwealth v Wright [1956] HCA 79
Case
[1956] HCA 79
Decision Date
CaseChat Overview and Summary
This case concerned an appeal to the High Court of Australia from a decision of the District Court of New South Wales. The appeal arose from a claim for workers' compensation brought by the respondent, the mother of a deceased soldier, against the appellant, the Commonwealth. The soldier, a member of the permanent military forces, was killed on a highway while walking towards the Bandiana Military Camp in Victoria, where he lived and served. His mother's claim for compensation under the Commonwealth Employees' Compensation Act 1930-1954 had initially been disallowed by the commissioner's delegate but was subsequently allowed by the District Court, which awarded her £750.
The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the deceased soldier was "travelling to his employment" at the time of his death, as contemplated by section 9A of the Commonwealth Employees' Compensation Act 1930-1954. This required the court to interpret the meaning of "travelling to his employment" in the context of a member of the armed forces, particularly when off-duty and not rostered for specific duties, and to consider the impact of amendments to the Act that had removed references to the "place of abode" and "place of employment" as termini for such journeys. The court also considered whether the appeal to the High Court was properly brought as of right.
A majority of the High Court, comprising Webb, Fullagar, and Kitto JJ., held that the deceased soldier was not proved to have been "travelling to his employment" at the time of the accident. The majority reasoned that while the soldier was travelling towards the military camp where he resided and was subject to military discipline, his journey was undertaken during a period of leave and was not sufficiently connected to his employment to satisfy the statutory requirement. They emphasised that the amendments to the Act had removed the certainty of a fixed starting or ending point for the journey, leaving the concept of "employment" as the sole terminus, which, in the context of a soldier off-duty, was too abstract to establish the necessary link. Dixon C.J. and McTiernan J. dissented, finding that the soldier's liability to military discipline and his general status as a member of the armed forces meant that his return to the camp, even when off-duty, constituted travelling to his employment.
The High Court, by majority, reversed the decision of the District Court and ordered that the appeal be allowed. The majority also noted, without deciding, that there were procedural doubts regarding the District Court's jurisdiction to hear the appeal and the High Court's jurisdiction to hear the appeal as of right.