Cases - AC Billings & Sons Ltd v Riden
Record details
- Name
- AC Billings & Sons Ltd v Riden
- Date
- [1958]
- Citation
- AC 240
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Contract administration
- Summary
-
A contractor owed a duty of care in tort to all persons who might be expected to visit the property they were working on to take such care as was, in all the circumstances, reasonable to ensure that they were not exposed to danger. In this particular case, advice that visitors should use a potentially unsafe means of entry to the property whilst the works were in progress was held to be negligent. A mere warning was held to be insufficient to discharge the contractor's duty (although it may lead to a finding of contributory negligence) because of the absence of a suitably safe alternative point of entry to the property.
The position is likely to be the same if a contract administrator gave similar advice.
The contract administrator may well undertake contractual responsibility for applying or supervising the application of health and safety regulations, which would extend his responsibility in this area but is beyond the scope of this section.