[1968] AC 1 (HL). The claimant was injured when he fell through a hole in a roof on which he was working. The defendent employer was held to be in breach of a statutory duty to provide crawling boards, to protect employees from falling through week roofs (see BreachOfStatutoryDuty). The question that arose was whether the injury suffered by the claimant arose from an event that legislation sought to prevent. Traditionally, courts have take a fairly narrow view of this requirement (see, for example, GorrisVScott1874). The duty in the present case was to prevent workers falling through weak roofs, not to prevent them falling through holes in otherwise sound roofs. House decided that, in a broader sense, the legislation had the intention of preventing workers being injured in accidents while working on roofs. As the accident had been of this type, the employers were liable. While this seems a reasonable decision, it does slightly broaden the scope of the tort of breach of statutory duty.
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