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the event of road accidents. Compulsory insurance will become effective as from the 1st June 1952.
Reform in this respect was completed by the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Ordinance, 1951, which prevents the rights of any third party being defeated by the rules as to the distribution of assets applicable in bankruptcy, or the winding up of a company and since the enactment of this Ordinance, in the event of the bankruptcy of the insured, the insured's rights against the insurer shall with certain reservations vest in the third party.
A further Ordinance which also brings the law of the Colony into line with English law' is the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance, 1951. This Ordinance has three main objects; firstly, that on the death of any person all causes of action subsisting against that person, or vested in him, should survive against or, as the case may be, for the benefit of his estate. Before the enactment of this Ordinance, the estate, for example, of a motorist who died after having negligently caused injury to a person or property, would escape liability, also if a person were to die from injuries received through the negligent driving of another, any relief would have been limited within the scope of the Fatal Accidents Ordinance, 1889, which enacted, inter alia, that an action could only be brought by near relatives of the deceased if the deceased had had a right of action had he merely been injured and not killed, and had his relatives suffered pecuniary loss in consequence of his death. To remedy this state of affairs is the first object of the new Ordinance. The second object of this Ordinance modifies the law of contributory negligence. Before the enactment of this Ordinance, if an accident were caused by the negligence of two persons, it was the party who had the last effective opportunity of saving the situation who was liable if he failed to take advantage of that opportunity, and before this Ordinance he was completely liable for the whole of the resulting damage, notwithstanding the other party's negligence. Now however, under this Ordinance the amount of liability, and therefore the claim for damages, is in effect apportioned to the amount of negligence displayed by both sides. Finally this Ordinance abolishes the doctrine of common employment, which briefly meant that, if an employee of a company, for example, was killed or injured during employment as a result of the negligence of a fellow employee of the same company, the Company escaped liability. The explanation to support this doctrine was that one employee must be deemed to have agreed to run the risk of a fellow servant being negligent. This however was a legal fiction, and an unjust one at that, and the third object of this Ordinance is to prevent an employer from setting up this particular defence of common employment in any future action by an employee.
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