ENGINEEES AND THE LAW OF NEGLIGENCE 57 



9. Liability for acts of assistant (and see Chap. XVIII., 3, 

 post). If an engineer employs an assistant, he may be held 

 responsible for the consequences of negligence on the part of 

 his servant. To entrust detail work to an assistant may be 

 perfectly lawful, but the blame will attach to the engineer if 

 anything goes wrong (see Lord North's Case, 1794, Dy. 161 ; 

 Mackersy v. Ramsays, 1842, 9 C. & F. 818 ; Jameson v. Simon, 

 Chap, XVIII., 4, post). Omission on the part of an engineer 

 to verify and test the calculations and to supervise erection 

 would be laid to his account. Cases on this head are not 

 numerous especially in direct relation to engineers; but it 

 seems that the Courts will not impose upon an architect the 

 duty of supervising every minute portion of the work which 

 the builder undertakes. So in Graham v. Commissioner oj 

 Works, 1902, Emden's Building Contracts, 670, an architect 

 employed on the terms of an ordinary building agreement, 

 having first ascertained that portions of the timber sent on to 

 the job were not of the stipulated quality, delegated to the 

 clerk of the works the duty of particularising what timbers 

 were to be removed. It was held that he was entitled to do this. 

 Arguing by an analogy, it is probable that an engineer will be 

 justified in leaving much of the actual labour of supervision to 

 his subordinates. The importance to the employer of an 

 engineer being responsible for the act of an assistant, lies in 

 the fact that the employer could not in many cases sue the 

 assistant at all. (See Cobb v. Becke, 1845, 6 Q. B. 930.) 



10. Who may sue the engineer for negligence. A question 

 may sometimes arise as to who is entitled to sue the engineer 

 for negligence. He acts as an intermediary between employer 

 and contractor. Which of these two parties may support a 

 claim for damage ? 



It cannot be too often pointed out that the relation of the 

 engineer or architect to the contractor is not the same as his 

 relation to the employer. So far as the contractor is concerned, 

 the engineer cannot be held liable for negligence. The 

 contractor accepts him as an intermediary between himself 

 and the employer : to determine questions arising under the 

 contract, and an opinion or decision, honestly given, cannot 

 be questioned in a court of law. Thus the contractor cannot 

 sue the engineer if it turns out that owing to some mistake in 

 the specifications, what seems to be a profitable turns out to 



