Devine v Colvilles Ltd

LORD AVONSIDE'S OPINION.—On 26th June 1964 the pursuer in the present action was working in the course of his employment with the defenders stripping ladles in the defenders' Ravenscraig Works. He was employed on the night shift and at four o'clock on that morning he asserts that he was standing on a steel platform 25 feet above ground level, when suddenly and without warning there was series of violent explosions which were believed to come from the defenders' oxygen plant. The pursuer states that the platform on which he was standing shook violently and that he, in common with other employees of the defenders, was put into a state of fear for his safety and he then asserts that he was either cast from or jumped from the platform to the ground and as a result sustained injuries, for which he now seeks reparation.

On the evidence before me I hold it proved that at about four on that morning there was a violent explosion or series of explosions. It may be that the noise which occurred did not signify an explosion in the technical or chemical sense, but there certainly was an extremely loud and alarming noise. I further hold it proved on the evidence before me that following upon these explosions there was a general panic in the building in which it took place and that this panic infected most of the men who were about or near the neighbourhood of the explosion. This, to my mind, is not at all surprising, when one considers that the source of the explosion or the place at which the explosion took place was near a vessel which contained something in the neighbourhood of 100 tons of molten metal and it requires little thought to see the danger which men in or about the vicinity considered might affect them.

I do not accept on the evidence that the pursuer has proved that he was blown from the platform. His final position in his own statement was a firm one that he had in fact been blown off the platform because of the blast of the explosion. There is no evidence of the incident having caused any blast whatsoever and there is no evidence of damage from the blast, and the actual nature of the happening, which consisted in the escape of oxygen from an oxygen tube which caught fire, does not suggest that the blast would be the result.

The difficulty which this gives the pursuer is that, as I have stated, his alternative case was that, if he was not blown or cast from the platform, he jumped from it. In the witness-box the pursuer vehemently denied suggestions not only by his opponent but also by his own counsel that he might have jumped from the platform. He did not budge from the position he took that he was blown from the platform by the blast. Mr Brand, for the defenders, not unnaturally fixed on this…