Law Slater V Clay Cross Co Ltd
COURT OF APPEAL
Slater v Clay Cross Co Ltd [1956] 2 QB 264
Full text
17 May 1956
DENNING LJ:
In Derbyshire there has been for well over a hundred years a railway line owned by the defendants. We were told that George Stephenson himself made it. The defendants use it so as to carry limestone from their quarries at Crich down to Ambergate. It is a small gauge line, only three feet, three inches wide, and is 2 1/2 miles long. On that small line there are two tunnels. One of them, with which we are concerned, is only about eight feet or nine feet high, and it is just sixty-six yards long. On 12 February 1953, the plaintiff was walking through the tunnel when she suddenly realised that a train was coming up behind her. She got down on to the ground to seek what safety she could, but unfortunately the train ran over one of her legs and cut it off. She now claims damages against the defendants saying that it was their fault.
If she were a trespasser on this railway, she would, of course, have no cause of action; but she says that the defendants had acquiesced for years in the villagers of Crich walking along this railway down to Ambergate and back. It was a short cut for them. The defendants had done nothing at all to show that they resented the villagers using it, and the villagers had in fact used it for years. The judge has found, and I think there can be no doubt, that she was what we call in law a licensee - not a trespasser who was unlawfully there, but a person who was permitted and allowed by the owners to be there - not for any matter in which they had an interest, but only for her own purposes.
It has been urged before us that, as she was licensee and not an invitee, the duty of the defendants and their servants is greatly affected: and that it is much less on that account. The judge did not take that view; he held that there was a duty on the defendants’ servants to take reasonable care in their operations, and he held that they had not taken that care.
Slater v Clay Cross Co Ltd [1956] 2 QB 264
Full text
17 May 1956
DENNING LJ:
In Derbyshire there has been for well over a hundred years a railway line owned by the defendants. We were told that George Stephenson himself made it. The defendants use it so as to carry limestone from their quarries at Crich down to Ambergate. It is a small gauge line, only three feet, three inches wide, and is 2 1/2 miles long. On that small line there are two tunnels. One of them, with which we are concerned, is only about eight feet or nine feet high, and it is just sixty-six yards long. On 12 February 1953, the plaintiff was walking through the tunnel when she suddenly realised that a train was coming up behind her. She got down on to the ground to seek what safety she could, but unfortunately the train ran over one of her legs and cut it off. She now claims damages against the defendants saying that it was their fault.
If she were a trespasser on this railway, she would, of course, have no cause of action; but she says that the defendants had acquiesced for years in the villagers of Crich walking along this railway down to Ambergate and back. It was a short cut for them. The defendants had done nothing at all to show that they resented the villagers using it, and the villagers had in fact used it for years. The judge has found, and I think there can be no doubt, that she was what we call in law a licensee - not a trespasser who was unlawfully there, but a person who was permitted and allowed by the owners to be there - not for any matter in which they had an interest, but only for her own purposes.
It has been urged before us that, as she was licensee and not an invitee, the duty of the defendants and their servants is greatly affected: and that it is much less on that account. The judge did not take that view; he held that there was a duty on the defendants’ servants to take reasonable care in their operations, and he held that they had not taken that care.