After losing an arm to a waste machine at West Coast Investment Limited, Joshua Ejiyere smiled home Monday after a Lagos High Court, Igbosere ordered the firm to pay N5 million compensation.
Trial judge, Justice Adeniyi Adebajo gave the order in a suit filed by the amputee against the firm, after upholding the claimant’s submission that the defendant was negligent in its operation of the machine.
Ejiyere had approached the court presided by Justice Ebenezer Adebajo claiming that he lost his right arm in the process of feeding waste into a machine owned by the defendant.
He claimed that he sustained the injury while working on the machine because another employee of the firm suddenly turned on the machine which was off at the time he commenced work.
He prayed the court to order the company to pay him N10 million for losing his right arm and also pick the bills of his medical treatment.
But in their submission, the firm prayed the court to dismiss the suit on grounds that the claimant was a trespasser and not its employee, adding that the person who caused the accident was no longer on its employ.
In his judgment, Justice Adebajo who acknowledged that the claimant was not an employee of the firm, however, dismissed the company’s claim that he was a trespasser.
Citing evidence given in the cause of trial, Justice Adebajo held that the claimant was invited to West Coast’s premises.
“Being a person legally in the premises of the first defendant, the company owed the claimant a duty of care.
“The duty of care was breached when the first defendant’s employee (second defendant) switched on the machine without any warning,” the court held.
Holding that the defendants conducted their affairs negligently, Justice Adebajo ordered them to pay the claimant N5 million as general damages as well as pay the cost of his treatment running into over N500,000 as special damages.
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