This Bill might be said to have its origin in certain proposals for the amendment of the law relating to torts contained in a Private Member's Bill which was moved in Dáil Éireann as long ago as 1941 by the present Taoiseach who was then a Private Deputy on the opposition side of the House. The fate of that particular Bill need not, I think, concern us now, except that I might say my predecessor accepted the principle of the Bill and it was referred to a private committee. The present Bill deals in a somewhat more comprehensive manner with the matters affecting the common law relating to torts that were covered by the Bill introduced in 1941 by Deputy Costello as he then was.
Of necessity, the Bill is, by reason of its subject matter, somewhat technical in character. Senators will no doubt have read the explanatory memorandum which was circulated with the Bill, and I feel that there is not much that I can add by way of explanation to what has been said in the memorandum. There are a few points, however, which I would like to make, if the House will bear with me for a little while.
The principal change which the Bill proposes to make in the existing law is to provide for contribution between tortfeasors. Under an archaic and outworn principle of the common law which we have inherited, there can at present be no contribution between tortfeasors. This is a serious defect in our law, which is capable of working considerable hardship and of being made the subject of grave abuses. If, for example, a passenger in a motor car receives a serious injury as a result of an accident involving the car in which he is travelling and another vehicle and, if he obtains judgment for damages, which may be substantial, against the owners of both cars, he can if he likes look to one of the owners for the whole of the damages and costs in the action and that particular owner, though he may have been by far the least culpable party in the accident, has in the present state of law no redress whatsoever against his co-tort-feasor who was far more to blame than him. This kind of case has been known to happen. Still worse, the present state of the law permits of, and indeed encourages, positive abuses because one of two or more defendants, against whom substantial damages may have been awarded, can bribe the successful plaintiff to pursue another defendant or defendants for recovery of the whole of the damages or costs.
I feel sure that the House will agree that it is time that the law in this matter was changed. The remedy proposed in the Bill is to provide for contribution between tortfeasors. The two possible kinds of cases are provided for, namely, the case in which all the tortfeasors are joined as defendants in the one action, which is covered by Section 4, and, secondly, the case in which separate actions are taken against the tortfeasors, which is provided for in Section 5. In the first type of case it is provided by Section 4 that the full damages and costs may be apportioned among the defendants according to the extent to which they are respectively found responsible for the injury. It may be noted that, where the action was tried with a jury, the power of apportionment will lie with the jury.
In the second type of case, that is, where there are separate actions, any tortfeasor who has paid any sum on foot of a judgment obtained against him is given the right, under Section 5, to recover a contribution from any other tortfeasor who may be held to be liable. I would like to stress that the right to recover a contribution under Section 5 will operate against a person who may not have been sued at all by the injured party so that there will be no possibility of one of the tortfeasors escaping liability through collusion between him and the injured party.
The Bill does not deprive an injured party of the right which he now has to look for the whole of the damages to any one or more of the persons responsible for the injury, but, as I have explained, the position of the tortfeasors is being improved by the conferring of the right of contribution between themselves.
The other amendment of the law which is being made by the Bill, while important in itself is, in a sense, incidental to the main change which the Bill proposes. This is the provision in Section 2 which seeks to do away with the rather artificial distinction that exists under the common law between the case in which the wrongdoers are joint tortfeasors and the case in which they are not joint tortfeasors. Where the wrongdoers are joint tortfeasors, an action against one of them resulting in a judgment for the plaintiff operates as a bar against further proceedings against any of the other tortfeasors, even though the injured party may have failed to recover any thing from the person whom he has sued. Section 2 remedies this position.
The Bill, being, as I have said, a somewhat technical one can, perhaps, be more appropriately discussed on Committee Stage, when any points of detail which Senators may wish to raise can be dealt with.
Before I finish I would like, with the permission of the Chair, to say a word or two on the question of law reform generally. It is, I think, generally accepted that what I might describe, for want of a better term, as the private law of the country, that is to say, the law that regulates relations between individual citizens as distinct from administrative law, stands in need of amendment in many respects. To quote a few examples, there is the bankruptcy law, the companies law, the law relating to intestacies, the law relating to the capacities and rights of married women and the law governing arbitration proceedings. Our statute law, as is well-known, is badly in need of consolidation and modernisation and Senators will recall in this connection that only a few years ago special Orders were passed for both the Dáil and Seanad to facilitate the passage of consolidation Bills. The scheme then envisaged has not, unfortunately shown any great results in practice to date. With the single exception of the recent measure dealing with local government law, there has been no statute law revision in this country since 1922, a fact which speaks for itself.
The occasion of the introduction of the present Bill affords, I think, a suitable opportunity for me to refer to the decision that has recently been taken to establish a new and separate branch of the Attorney-General's Office which will concentrate entirely on statute law revision and consolidation, while leaving the Parliamentary Draftman's Office, as we know it, free to deal with the ordinary day-to-day legislation. The new branch which will deal with proposals for the reform of the law as well as preparing the actual legislation and which will involve some additions to the personnel of the Attorney-General's Office, will come into being in the course of the next few months and we may hope for a steady flow of measures of consolidation and of reform to engage the time of the Dáil and Seanad for a number of years. In the meantime we may, I suggest, regard the present Bill as a first instalment in the field of law reform and as something upon which, if I may be permitted to use a homely metaphor, we as legislators may "cut our teeth" in preparation for further measures dealing with such matters as arbitration, the legal status of married women, intestate estates and other matters. Bills to deal with the matters I have mentioned specifically just now will, I think be laid before the Oireachtas in the near future.
