Pennill v Belize Brewing Company Ltd

• Jurisdiction: Belize
• Judge: Shanks, J.
• Judgment Date: 14 April 2000
• Court: High Court (Belize)
• Docket Number: 180 of 1995
• Date: 14 April 2000

High Court

Shanks, J.

180 of 1995

Pennill

and

Belize Brewing Co. Ltd.

Appearances:

Mr. W.P. Elrington, S.C. for the plaintiff.

Mr. Derreck Courtenay, S.C. for the defendant.

Damages - Personal injury — Contributory negligence — Serious burns to left arm, left hand and right arm, moderate burns to right hand, severe pain, unsightly scarring, mental flashbacks and nightmares — Quantum — Award of $20, 125 less forty percent — Final award of $12, 075 general damages.

Shanks, J.

1 I have found this a difficult case to decide. Mr. Pennill suffered a serious accident at work on 13th January 1995. He had been working at the Belize Brewing Company for 17 years. He was a very good workman. He had been made a supervisor. In the accident, he suffered serious burns to his arms and hands. He continued to suffer dreams and flashbacks and he has not worked since the accident. I must decide whether his employers, who were generous to him in the aftermath of the accident, are legally responsible for it.

2 The accident happened during the annual process of cleaning and re-coating the inside of the fermentation tanks with mamut. This process involved someone getting into the tank (which is 10 feet high and 8 feet in diameter) with a blowtorch (which is supplied with gas by a hose from a butane gas cylinder outside) and applying the hot mamut with a brush while heating the metal surface of the tank with the blow torch. The plaintiff was given this task. He was wearing a mask provided by the defendant which also had a hose arrangement to allow him to breathe outside air and some gloves also provided by the defendant. There was a fan at the manhole entrance to the tank to blow away fumes. When he finished one container of hotmamut the plaintiff called to his assistant outside the tank to get him a new one. While he was waiting for this to be brought, he turned off the blow torch. When he went to re-light the blow torch to start heating an area of metal again, there was an explosion of gas and he caught fire with the results I have already mentioned.

3 It is clear that the accident was caused by a leak of gas from the blow torch while it was turned off. The defendant's case is that this happened because the plaintiff failed to turn it off properly at the tap valve. I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that this must have been the case. I reach this view in the light of the following:–

• (i) the plaintiff himself accepted that this was a possibility in the course of being cross-examined by Mr. Courtenay,

• (ii) l accept the combined evidence of Oscar Flores and Carlos Turcios for the defendant that the blow torch was in satisfactory working order before the accident and had been used the day before by the plaintiff and that it was being used by someone else within 30–40 minutes of the accident and continued to be used for a further two years without any problems and without repair or modification;

• (iii) I reject the plaintiff's evidence (contradicted by Mr. Flores and only raised for the first time in cross- examination) to the effect that he (Flores) had...