Mookan Sadaiyakumar v Kim Hock Corporation Pte Ltd

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Loo Ngan Chor
• Judgment Date: 18 February 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] SGDC 34
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: DC/DC Suit No. 1362 of 2017, HC/District Court Appeal No. 6 of 2019, HC/District Court Appeal No. 7 of 2019
• Published date: 27 November 2019
• Year: 2019
• Hearing Date: 21 November 2018,22 November 2018,24 January 2019
• Plaintiff Counsel: Mr Shanker Kumar K (M/s Hoh Law Corporation) -
• Defendant Counsel: Mr Ramasamy s/o Karuppan Chettiar (M/s Central Chambers Law Corporation) -
• Subject Matter: Negligence,breach of duty,causation,contributory negligence
• Citation: [2019] SGDC 34

District Judge Loo Ngan Chor: INTRODUCTION:

Parties have filed cross-appeals against my decision in this industrial accident matter. I now provide the full reasons for my decision.

The trial before me was only on the issue of liability, leaving assessment of damages for another day. The plaintiff testified for himself. The defendant called three witnesses, including the plaintiff’s supervisor at the material time, whom I shall refer to simply as Joshua.

LATTERLY, UNDISPUTED FACTS:

The plaintiff, an Indian national, was employed as a skilled worker by the defendant. Until the accident on 8th August 2016, he had been so employed since July 2012.

The defendant recycles waste materials and operates power plants. I would suppose that a big part of this business involves the burning of waste wood to produce steam which is then used to run turbines for energy generation.

The burning of waste wood is done in boiler furnaces (“furnace(s)”, as the case may be) located on the ground level of the defendant’s factory. Residual ash from the burning falls through rotary valves and last into an ash bin. Occasionally, the rotary valves trip when metal objects found with waste wood fall into the valves along with ash, get lodged in the housing of the rotary valves and cause the affected furnace (including its rotary valves) to trip and stop operating.

Monitoring of the operations of the furnaces takes place in a control room on the second level of the factory. Computer monitors show the operations when the furnaces are operating all right and when a furnace trips. When tripping happens, a red signal flashes on the monitor and an alarm buzzer goes off. The supervisor would then send workers like the plaintiff to remove the metal objects lodged in the rotary valves. After this is done and communicated to the control room, a number of steps takes place there before the furnace can be re-activated.

The rotary valves, once tripped, do not re-start until the control room takes steps to re-start the operation of the furnace involved.⁰

The plaintiff’s job included emptying the ash bins, area cleaning and removing the metal objects lodged in the rotary valves housing.

Workers like the plaintiff work on two shifts. The plaintiff was on the night shift from 8pm to 8am when the accident occurred. He was with another worker and was supervised by Joshua who was positioned in the control room.

All of what I just mentioned was not in dispute, at any rate during the trial.

THE DISPUTE:

The plaintiff’s version is that at about 3am, Joshua had told him face to face to go to the furnace identified as T1 No. 3 as it had tripped. This same furnace had tripped earlier during their shift and the plaintiff says that Joshua said that the same furnace had tripped again. When he went to T1 No. 3, he removed the chamber cover of the inspection chamber and noted that the rotary valves had in fact stopped although ash entered his eyes. Using his hand phone torch, he noted the presence of a short steel bar in the housing of the rotary valves. He thus used his right hand, which was gloved, to try to retrieve the object when suddenly the rotary valves came back to life. He managed to pull out his right hand but not before he suffered crush injuries to several fingers of his right hand. He immediately contacted Joshua to stop the furnace and was eventually brought to hospital.

Joshua, in his affidavit of evidence-in-chief, explained the elaborate process, occupying a minute or two, which takes place in the control room in order to re-start a furnace which has tripped after the metal obstruction has been removed. This requires the supervisor to move to a breaker control panel 10 steps away from the main control panel to re-set the breaker, returning to the main monitor panel to re-set the alarm before going to the on/off switch.¹ Although placed under the heading above, the facts in this paragraph were not really disputed.

Joshua’s evidence was that furnace T1 no. 3 had tripped earlier but was working alright at the time when the plaintiff claimed that he was again sent to it because it had allegedly tripped again. Joshua said that the furnace that tripped this time around was that called T2 no. 8 and it was to this furnace that he had sent the plaintiff. As soon as the plaintiff called for help over the walkie talkie, he noticed on his computer monitor that furnace T1 no. 3 had tripped and, realising that something had gone wrong, rushed down to assist the plaintiff.

The defendant has counter-claimed for repayment of medical expenses paid on the plaintiff’s behalf and medical leave wages paid to the plaintiff as its case is that the plaintiff was solely to be blamed for the accident.

FINDINGS:

The plaintiff’s final version of the circumstances surrounding the accident – that he was directed to attend again to furnace T1 No. 3, that he found that it had tripped and stopped so that he opened up the chamber and then it suddenly restarted after he removed an obstructing object - is implausible. The fact of the matter, which was not disputed at trial, was that once a furnace trips, it does not re-start on its own until certain steps are taken in the control room.

Implausibility aside, the plaintiff’s early position, before the trial, contained two discrepant features which served to cast further doubt on the veracity of his final case.

First, the plaintiff had initially claimed that when an object lands on the rotating valves, Joshua would have to stop the operation of the furnace. He took this surprisingly incorrect factual point in the plaintiff’s pleaded case² and evidence-in-chief³, it being more apparent in the latter than the former. At paragraph 7 of his affidavit of evidence-in-chief, the plaintiff stated that “If there is an ash item (which is a short steel bar) that had obstructed the operation of the valve of the machine, the operator would stop the rotating valve in order for workers to remove the ash item from the machine.” (Italics added)

Secondly, as pleaded, the plaintiff’s stand was that someone had re-activated the furnace as he was removing the obstructing object when he averred, as two particulars of the defendant’s negligence, that the defendant had failed (a) “to ensure that the operator would not suddenly re-activate the rotation of the valve while the plaintiff was carrying out the task;” and (b) “to ensure that the operator give[s] any or any sufficient notice or warning to the plaintiff before re-activating the rotation of the valve”.

This point was not again expressly made in his affidavit evidence so that I took it to have been abandoned.

Hence, I found that when the plaintiff went to furnace T1 No. 3, it must have been in operation. He had gone to the wrong furnace, the correct furnace being T2 No. 8. The plaintiff was really quite careless to have failed to note the signs of furnace T1 No. 3 being in operation and then to have placed his right hand into the rotary valves housing, especially since he had to manually open the chamber of the furnace with the use of a spanner. In operation, the rotating valves cause vibration that can be felt and a noise that can be heard.

Given the considerations above, I would have dismissed the plaintiff’s claim. But, as I appreciated the story, it did not end just there.

I found it quite troubling that opening the chamber cover would not trip and stop the furnace. As I noted to the defendant’s learned counsel, Mr Ramasamy, when he played the first of three videos at the start of the trial, of the operation of the furnaces, this was an omission that metaphorically jumped out of the page at me.

Court:	What was that noise in the background?
Ramasamy:	That’s the machine noise.
Court:	Machine noise?
Ramasamy:	The machine runs.
Court:	I thought it stops.
Ramasamy:	Huh?
Court:	It doesn’t stop? When you open th--the doo---chamber door---
Ramasamy:	Uh-huh.
Court:	the machine doesn’t stop?
Ramasamy:	No, when he op---
Court:	It keeps going, is it?4
…
Court:	You know what I’m saying? Another thing is this---the blast furnace, when you open the door---
Ramasamy:	Boiler furnace.
Court:	of the chamber---
Ramasamy:	Boiler furnace, Sir.
Court:	Oh, boiler furnace?
Ramasamy:	Uh-huh.
Court:	Boiler furnace. When you open the door of it, it does not automatically stop, as a safety feature?
Ramasamy:	No, it doesn’t.
Court:	Huh?
Ramasamy:	It doesn’t.
Court:	Because your client is saying what---what---what emphasis on safety and everything? The 1st thing that crossed my mind, how come when you open the chamber door, the thing’s still running?
Ramasamy:	No, the rotary valve does not stop when the chamber door is open. That---that was not how the---the---the manufacturers set it.
Court:	Set it?
Ramasamy:	Yah, the---they just buy it and then they still---under the---the---these are customised machines.
Court:	Sure, customised.
Ramasamy:	Yah. That’s why they are---they are commi---
Court:	For the future I’m---
Ramasamy:	testing and---
Court:	supposed look at all these things?
Ramasamy:	Yah.
Court:	Here the damage is done, so, we’ll see whether your client is responsible. Wait, this---there is basically these two big issues, whether automated---
Ramasamy:	Okay.
Court:	record or not---
Ramasamy:	Yah.
Court:	various---
Ramasamy:	Yes.
Court:	things. And then whether---why the chamber door doesn’t seem to---when it’s open, it doesn’t seem to stop the machine---
Ramasamy:	No---
Court:	the furnace.
Ramasamy:	the reason being, Sir, the

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