ABSTRACT
Per Jenkins LJ at p 1050: An extreme form of the argument on the plaintiff’s side is to the effect that, in considering what is reasonably practicable, regard should be had exclusively to what would have been possible as a matter of engineering in the way of providing support for roofs and sides without making the working of the mine physically or economically impossible, and that it is for this purpose irrelevant to inquire what measures were or appeared to be necessary and sufficient to
make roofs and sides secure according to the best assessment of the situation which could have been made immediately prior to the accident. This means, in other words, that what is reasonably practicable to make roofs and sides secure must be judged without reference to what appears to be necessary for that purpose. On this view a mine owner might be advised by the best mining engineers in the country that a roof in his mine was perfectly secure without artificial support, which would be wholly superfluous and a mere waste of time, labour and money, but he would, nevertheless, be obliged to put in artificial support as otherwise he would not have done all that was reasonably practicable to make the roof secure and would be liable if through some unforeseeable happening it fell and injured someone working under it. Again, if he did put in some form of artificial support of a certain design and strength, selected after careful consideration as adequate to support some particular roof, and owing to some unforeseeable happening a fall of quite exceptional size occurred, which the support provided did not suffice to prevent, it would avail him nothing in a suit by some workman injured by the fall to say with truth: ‘I went into the whole matter very carefully, and I was satisfied that support of this design and strength was sufficient to prevent any fall of which there was any foreseeable risk.’ He would, nevertheless, be in breach of his statutory duty on proof that support of greater strength or better design could have been provided as a matter of engineering without making the working of the mine physically or economically impossible, and would or might have prevented the fall in question. I reject this argument as stretching the mine owner’s duty far beyond what is ‘reasonably practicable’ according to any rational construction of that expression. To my mind, that which is ‘reasonably practicable’ in this context is no more nor less than what is capable of being done to make roofs and sides secure within the limits of what it is reasonable to do, and it cannot be reasonable to do for this purpose anything more than that which it appears necessary and sufficient to do according to the best assessment of what is necessary and sufficient that can be made at the relevant time, that is, in the present instance a point of time immediately prior to the accident ...
