Commissioner for Railways v Collins

Resting on the Rails

On a hot summer’s afternoon in December 1957, tragedy struck during what should have been a routine lunch break for a seasoned railway worker.

Stanley Herbert Collins, a 50-year-old employee of the Commissioner for Railways with 16 years of service, was overseeing a small team of men assigned to adjust rail lines along the northern track near Rhodes Railway Station in Sydney. After a demanding morning of physical labour under the hot sun, the team paused at midday to take a well-earned lunch break.

The three men sought refuge in the shade beneath a nearby bridge to eat their packed lunches. After finishing their meals and with nearly an hour before their scheduled return to work at 12.50 PM, they decided to rest. Mr Collins and a fellow worker lay down across the relief line—a track occasionally used by passing trains. Mr Collins rested his head on one of the rails and soon drifted into sleep, unaware of the danger approaching. At 12.46 PM, just minutes before the crew was due to resume work, a train passed over the relief line and struck Mr Collins, killing him instantly.

Following the accident, Mrs Veronica Carmelita Collins—Mr Collins’ widow—applied to the Workers’ Compensation Commission, seeking compensation on the grounds of total dependency.¹ She claimed that her husband’s death occurred while he was carrying out his duties as an employee of the Commissioner for Railways. The Commissioner, however, contested this claim, maintaining that Mr Collins was not acting in the course of his employment at the time of his death.

The Course of Employment

Under Australian law, a worker’s injury must arise ‘out of or in the course of’ employment in order to qualify for workers’ compensation.² Demonstrating that an injury occurred ‘in the course of’ employment requires establishing a temporal link between the employment and injury,³ specifically, a ‘nexus of time, place and activity’.⁴

In a previous post on this website—discussing the UK case of Weaver v Tredegar Iron and Coal Company Ltd⁵—I explore the scope of the phrase ‘in the course of employment’, focusing on whether it can extend to injuries sustained after a work shift has ended. In Mr Collins’ case, the issue was the scope of this phrase in the context of dangerous conduct during a lunch break.

It is well understood that workers, as human beings, require some food and rest during their workday.⁶ Provided that breaks are taken in an authorised manner, injuries sustained during such periods are considered to have occurred ‘in the course of’ employment. The Commissioner for Railways conceded that Mr Collins, by remaining near the railway line, eating his lunch, and resting, was engaging in activities reasonably required, expected, or authorised by his employer. However, the Commissioner argued that Mr Collins’ decision to leave a position of safety and lie down with his head on the rail tracks constituted a departure from the course of his employment.

Lunch Break Liability

The Full Court of the Supreme Court of New South Wales was tasked with determining whether Mr Collins’ fatal injury, sustained during his rest break, arose ‘in the course of’ his employment.

Historically, it had been held that a worker would not be acting in the course of their employment if, during working hours, they engaged in conduct that introduced a ‘peril’ not ordinarily associated with their duties.⁷ However, this approach was reconsidered in two influential House of Lords decisions: Harris v Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd,⁸ and Noble v Southern Railway Company.⁹ These cases rejected the employer’s defence of ‘added peril’ and established that a negligent or reckless act by a worker—no matter how serious—was not, in itself, sufficient to deprive the worker of compensation, at least in cases where the worker was, at the time, carrying out the very task he or she was employed to do.

This raised a key legal question for determination in Mr Collins’ case: while reckless or negligent conduct during work hours, and in relation to tasks a worker is paid to do, will not fall outside the course of employment, does the same principle extend to negligent conduct occurring during an authorised break, such as a lunch period?

In resolving this question, the Full Court of the Supreme Court referred to the test laid down by Dixon J in Humphrey Earl Ltd v Speechley,¹⁰ where his Honour held that when an accident occurs during an ‘interval’ between periods of work, whether it occurs ‘in the course of’ employment depends on whether the worker was doing something they were ‘reasonably required, expected or authorised to do in order to carry out his [or her] duties.’¹¹

Applying this test, the Full Court acknowledged that, taken as ‘a naked proposition’, it could not reasonably be said that the Commissioner for Railways would have required, expected, or authorised Mr Collins to go to sleep across the railway line.¹² However, once it was accepted that Mr Collins was entitled to rest during his lunch break, and that resting was an act he could reasonably be expected to undertake, the fact that he did so in a negligent or rash manner did not alter the essential character of the authorised act.¹³

The Court observed that while a worker who goes to sleep during active work hours would be ‘on a frolic of his own’, sleeping during a lunch break was not inconsistent with employment. Doing so in a dangerous location merely constituted performing an authorised act in a negligent way, and the Commissioner’s argument that this act fell outside the course of employment was regarded by the Court as an attempt to revive the defunct ‘added peril’ doctrine.¹⁴

Accordingly, Evatt CJ, Herron J, and Collins J concluded that Mr Collins’ fatal injury occurred ‘in the course of’ his employment.

The Curious Case of Recess Injuries

Ordinary breaks in employment, such as the lunch period at issue in Mr Collins’ case, have long been recognised as falling within the course of employment under workers’ compensation law. At all times while eating his lunch and then sleeping on the train tracks, Mr Collins remained on his employer’s premises. While it is generally uncontroversial that a lunch break taken on the employer’s premises will fall within the course of employment, more complex legal questions can arise when a worker steps away from the premises during such breaks.

To address this issue, most workers’ compensation legislation across Australia provides a statutory extension of the ‘course of employment’ test to capture ‘recess injuries’¹⁵—those sustained during ‘a relatively brief interruption in an otherwise continuous period of work’.¹⁶ While the precise form of this statutory provision differs across jurisdictions, it typically captures injuries that occur during temporary absences from a worker’s usual place of employment.¹⁷

There are many examples of courts and tribunals applying the ‘in the course of employment’ test, or the recess provisions, broadly to capture a wide range of private activities engaged in during a break from work. Compensation claims have been upheld in circumstances where workers sustained injury while shopping for groceries,¹⁸ playing cricket,¹⁹ or swimming in a river during a lunch break.²⁰ This broad approach also extends to injuries sustained during breaks while working from home.²¹ Notably, the Victorian Court of Appeal has held that the fact a worker may be fulfilling their own private needs or wishes at the time of their injury—as opposed to the needs or wishes of their employer—is not a barrier to compensation.²²

This expansive protection reflects the remedial character of workers’ compensation legislation. The High Court of Australia has repeatedly recognised that such laws reflect a beneficial purpose and should be construed accordingly, in favour of the injured worker, where possible.²³ Superior state and federal courts have likewise emphasised that workers’ compensation legislation, with its remedial aim of providing benefits to injured workers and encouraging improved health and safety performance by employers, ought to be construed in a way ‘which is generous to employees’.²⁴ In contrast to the common law, workers’ compensation provides the protection of a statutory scheme which guarantees access to immediate financial support and avoids the challenges of long and costly litigation. There is also an implicit recognition in the law that workers often have limited control over when and where they take their breaks. Despite being temporarily relieved from active duties, they remain within an overall period of employment.

Yet, the law on recess injuries presents something of a paradox. While workers are covered during recess breaks over which employers may have limited control, coverage for other types of injuries—such as those sustained while commuting to or from work (‘journey claims’)—have been restricted or abolished in many jurisdictions due to precisely this lack of employer oversight and inability to control the risk of such injuries.²⁵ Competing statutory objectives also impact the law in this area.²⁶ The scope of workers’ compensation schemes and their statutory interpretation must strike a delicate balance between providing financial support to injured workers and ensuring the continued affordability and financial viability of the statutory scheme.²⁷ Indeed, even in recess injury cases, courts have given explicit regard to the legislature’s intention of narrowing the scope of compensable injuries in order to stop the ‘financial haemorrhaging’ of the statutory scheme.²⁸

Statutory provisions that extend the ‘in the course of’ employment test to capture recess injuries also incorporate an exclusion for workers who voluntarily subject themselves to any ‘abnormal risk of injury’ during their temporary absence from work.²⁹ This exclusion has sometimes been interpreted broadly, allowing workers to remain eligible for compensation unless they knowingly accept a risk ‘in disregard of its consequences’.³⁰ However, where a worker does voluntarily and unreasonably engage in an inherently dangerous act during a lunch break, they will be denied compensation under these recess provisions.³¹

Conclusion: Dangerous Decisions and the Course of Employment

In Mr Collins’ case, the Full Court of the Supreme Court of New South Wales accepted that he was sleeping during an authorised lunch break—an activity reasonably expected in the course of his employment. Although he chose to rest in a dangerously reckless manner with his head on the railway line, the core nature of his activity remained within the scope of what his employer had authorised. Accordingly, Mr Collins’ fatal injury was found to have occurred ‘in the course of’ his employment. Since the Court was not concerned in this case with statutory extensions of the ‘in the course of’ employment test, or related exclusions for exposing oneself to an abnormal risk of injury, Mr Collins’ conduct—albeit negligent, reckless, and perilously unwise—did not disqualify his wife from receiving compensation following her husband’s tragic death.