M'Kee v. John S. Stein & Co., Ltd

Subject_1 Master and Servant Subject_2 Compensation Subject_3 Average Weekly Earnings Subject_4 Deductions from Wages — Special Expenses — Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII, cap. 58), First Schedule, 2 ( d ). Facts: A miner was killed by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. He employed a drawer whom he himself paid out of his wages. The deceased had been accustomed to purchase explosives for his work from his employers, and the price of these they deducted in paying his wages.

Held , in an arbitration under the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906, that in determining the average weekly earnings of the deceased there fell to be deducted from his gross wages the amount of wages paid by him to his drawer, but not the sums retained by his employers as the cost of the explosives.

Abram Coal Company v. Southern , [1903] AC 306 ; Midland Railway v. Sharpe , [1904] AC 349 , followed .

The Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII, cap. 58), First Schedule, 2 ( d ), enacts—“Where the employer has been accustomed to pay to the workman a sum to cover any special expense entailed on him by the nature of his employment, the sum so paid shall not be reckoned as part of the earnings.”

Mrs Sarah Jane Ferguson or M'Kee, for herself and as curator for her daughter Esther M'Kee, a minor, and as tutor for her daughters Sarah Frances M'Kee and Eliza Jane M'Kee, pupils, being dissatisfied with an award of the Sheriff-Substitute at Falkirk ( Moffat ), acting as arbitrator under the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906, appealed by way of stated case.