An employee who cannot prove liability under these headings may still claim under the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts 1965–74. In that case he has only to prove that his injury was caused by an accident arising out of or in the course of his employment or by an industrial disease; it is not necessary for him to prove any negligence or breach of duty by the employer, and he is generally entitled to full compensation even though he was himself negligent or disobeyed orders. Compensation is usually by weekly payments subject to relatively small limits whatever the loss.
Dependants also have similar rights to compensation in the case of fatal accidents.
The wide legal liability of an employer, which goes far beyond cases where he is morally to blame, is justified on the grounds that it is the complexity and pressure of modern industrial work which makes workmen accident-prone. The employer passes the cost of compensation or insurance on to the public in his prices, and it is felt right that the public, who ultimately get the benefit of the work, should bear the financial loss from accidents, and not the individual workmen injured.
Division of liability—indemnity. There are, of course, at least three parties who may be liable under these headings—the employer, the engineer and the contractor—and two or more of them may be liable in law for the same damage, e.g. the employer with the contractor in some cases of nuisance (p. 420, second case, and case p. 391).
In these cases the injured party is entitled to recover the damages which he has suffered wholly from one or partly from each of the parties liable and may sue one or more of them as he thinks fit. These cls. 22 and 24, therefore, define the position clearly by specifying, very roughly, that the contractor must make good to the employer all liabilities which he incurs to third parties due to the contractor’s fault and vice versa.
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