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TMI Blog1954 (3) TMI 77X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... his employment. The disability which the disease has brought on him is permanent and total. During his employment, his wages were ₹ 60/- to ₹ 70/- per month. 3. On 26th August, 1950, the appellant applied for compensation under the Workmen's Compenisation Act for personal injury by accident. The application did not state under what section of the Act it was made, but it was clear from the nature of the application that the appellant was making a case under Section 3(2) of the Act and that he was pleading an occupational disease specified as peculiar to his employment in Part B, Sen. III. 4. The Commissioner has found that the appellant was a workman within the meaning of Section 2(1) (n) of the Act, read with Clause (ii) of Schedule II. Yet, and in spite of finding that the appellant had suffered the personal injury of lead-poisoning arising out of and in the course of his employment he has dismissed the claim in the view that in Schedule III of the Act, the disease of lead poisoning had been specified as peculiar only to employments which were processes involving the use of lead, but not also employments which consisted in the mere handling of lead. In the C ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... en no amendment of the Workmen's Compensation Act after the Factories Act of 1948, nor is there any other indication that the new Act is not be read for the old, as required by Section 8, General Clauses Act. 8. As against these considerations, it wss urged that the Factories Act of 1948 was not a repealing and amending Act, but was an Act to consolidate and amend the law relating to labour in factories, as the preamble showed, and, consequently, Section 8, General Clauses Act would not apply. That argument was founded on a misconception. Section 8, General Clauses Act docs not require that the later Act repealing and re-enacting an earlier Act, should be a repealing and amending Act. All that it requires is that a Central Act should repeal and re-enact a former enactment. To that it was replied that even the repeal of the Factories Act of 1934 had now disappeared, because the repeal was effected by Section 120 of the Act of 1948, read with a table of enactments therein set out, but by the Repealing and Amending Act of 1950, the table of repealed enactments had itself been repealed. With the table gone, the operative words of Section 120 of the Act of 1948 had been left w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nsation Act, read with the first entry in the righthand column of Part E of Schedule III. 11. It will be useful to see first, and broadly, what the two provisions do. Broadly speaking, Section 3(2) enlarges the concept of an 'injury by accident' and gives the workmen the benefit of a presumption. It provides as follows: If a workman employed in any employment specified in Part A of Schedule III contracts any disease specified therein as an occupational disease peculiar to that employment, or if a workman, whilst in the service of an employer in whose service he has been employed for a continuous period of not less than six months in any employment specified in Part B of Schedule III, contracts any disease specified therein as an occupational disease peculiar to that employment, the contracting of the disease shall be deemed to be an injury fay accident within the meaning of this section and, unless the employer proves the contrary, the accident shall be deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of the employment in the same kind of employment. The ordinary notion of an injury by accident is that it means physical harm caused to a workman by a sudden mishap w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ction 3(2), the appellant did not make any attempt to prove any specific injury. If his case under Section 3(2) is not established, he must fail. 12. Turning now to Schedule III, it is divided into two parts, A and B. Part A is concerned with cases for which employment for no particular period is required, but Part B requires that the workman .should have been employed for a continuous period of not less than six months in the employment concerned. Both the parts specify employments which involve contact with injurious substance or exposure to certain conditions as incidents of the workman's duties and they specify diseases which are caused by slow and gradual ingestion of offensive matter or by a general pressure on the physical system of the workman. 13. The appellant has proved that he is a workman and also that he had been employed as an impositor for more than six months under the respondent. The disease from which he is suffering is chronic lead poisoning. The only entry in Schedule III which is applicable to his case is the first entry in Part B which describes the employment concerned as any process involving the use of lead or any of its preparations or compound ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ' and 'handling' have been separately mentioned, yet even as to the disease of lead-poisoning, handling is also a process under the language of the general heading of the second column of the schedule. 15. On behalf of the respondent it was contended that the natural meaning of the word 'process' made it something different from 'handling', and it was said that a process meant a mode of treatment of certain materials in order to produce a given result, a species of activity performed on the subject-matter in order to transform or reduce it to a certain state. It was accordingly contended that in order that an employment involving contact with lead might be a process, it was necessary that some operation should be performed on the metal in order to bring it to a certain shape or condition. That contention does not appear to me to be acceptable. According to the Oxford Dictionary one of the meanings of the word 'process' is a continuous and regular action or succession of actions, taking place or carried on in a definite manner, and leading to the accomplishment of some result. The activity contemplated by that definition is perfec ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... or any of its preparations, such use being any kind of use, it must be held to be an employment within the Schedule. 18. The duties of the appellant have already been mentioned. After the matters to be printed have been set in type on a linotype machine, he took the types, arranged them in a proper order so as to make up a forme and then fixed them up in a frame or a chest. Anyone familiar with a lonotype machine knows that it throws out lead bars, each one of the length of the intended line, on which letters have been imprinted and it is these bars which have to be arranged in a proper order in order to make a page of intelligible reading matter. In my view, in so arranging the bars and fixing them up in a chest, an impositor does not merely handle lead, but carries out an intelligent operation in the performance of which lead or preparations of lead are used. 'Handling', as contemplated by the Indian Schedule and, I conceive, as also contemplated by the English Schedule, is mere handling, involving no use of the material concerned such as a menial servant might be engaged in, if he were employed to carry the bars to the press. The employment of the appellant in the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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