NELSON v. MENSAH

JUDGMENT OF EDUSEI J.

In this action the plaintiff is claiming damages for the injuries he has suffered in the workshop of the defendant alleging:

(a) there was a statutory breach by the defendant's failure to securely fence his saw-machine, and

(b) the ground of common law negligence.

The evidence clearly shows that the plaintiff was apprenticed to the defendant to learn the carpentry trade in his workshop. There is no dispute the defendant's workshop is a factory within the meaning of the Factories, Offices and Shops Act, 1970 (Act 328). After his apprenticeship, which lasted four years, the plaintiff was employed by the defendant as a carpenter in the same workshop, and he had been doing this work as a carpenter for some two years before the accident which resulted in injury to himself. The accident happened in the morning of 17 April 1973, and the plaintiff's evidence as to how the accident occurred is as follows:

"I remember that on 17 April 1973, when I went to work at the defendant's workshop the defendant was not there. The son of the defendant told me something and as a result I cut the boards with the aid of the saw-machine. I put the board into the saw-machine and as I turned the board I saw that my two fingers went into the machine. I could not pull out my two fingers. A certain small boy who was not working there stopped the saw-machine by switching off the electric power. I then pulled out my fingers and saw that I had lost the ring and middle fingers of my left hand. I also lost a part of my index finger of my left hand. I was alone in the workshop."

The defendant testified that he did not instruct the plaintiff that morning as to the type of work he should do in the workshop nor did he [p.180] give any such instructions through his son, the defendant's first witness. The defendant's first witness confirmed his father's story and I accept the defendant's statement that no instructions were given directly or indirectly to the plaintiff to do any work in the workshop of the defendant. My reason for the acceptance of the defendants statement is that since he and the plaintiff lived in the same house he, the defendant, would in all probability, have given any instructions as to the type of work to be done by the plaintiff to him in the morning of 17 April 1973, before he left for the hospital. He could not have given any such instructions to his son who lived in a house different from that of the plaintiff and the defendant.

Be that as