Roles v Nathan (t/a Manchester Assembly Rooms) [1963] 1 WLR 1117, [1963] 2 All ER 908 is an occupiers' liability case in English tort law.
They had been warned repeatedly and told not to stay in too long, and not to work while a fire was alight.
"This case arises out of a tragic accident which took place on Friday, December 12, 1958, when two chimney sweeps were overcome by fumes, and died in the basement of the Manchester Assembly Rooms.
In April 1958 some repairs were carried out, and a firm of builders gave this advice: "If it smokes, light a fire at the foot of the flue to create a draught."
He described how they acted: "Donald crawled into the horizontal flue, I told him he should take care and not go in when the thing was just open.
Mr Collingwood went on to say: "I ordered them out and told them the danger of the gas, and the use of its and they said that they knew a damn sight better; they had been in this business all their life; they did not need my advice."
He created a draught by lighting a bit of paper at the bottom of the vertical shaft so as to get it hot.
He advised a permanent remedy, either a new flue or an induction fan in the base of the chimney.
He advised the two sweeps, Mr. Corney and everyone there that the two vent holes (the inspection chamber and the sweep-hole) were to be sealed up before the boiler was lit up.
The sweeps had very nearly completed their work, but they had not finished sealing up the sweep-hole in the vertical shaft.
When the police inspected the boiler between 8 and 9 o'clock in the morning, the fire was found to be brightly burning.
Moreover, the occupier was under no duty of care, because under s.2(3)(b) the risk was incident to the workmen's calling, a danger they could have been expected to guard against.
Pearson LJ dissented, but as he made clear this was on the basis of what he saw the evidence of the workers' conduct to be.
The judge found Mr. Corney guilty of negligence because "he failed to take such care as should have ensured that there was no fire lit until the sweep-hole had been sealed up."
The judge said: "That negligence" -- that is to say, of the chimney sweeps -- "consisted in the knowledge that there was gas about, or probably would be, the way they ignored explicit warnings and showed complete indifference to the danger which was pointed out to them in plain language, and this strange indifference to the fact that the fire was alight, when Mr. Collingwood had said it ought not to be, until the sweep-hole had been sealed."
It has rid us of those two unpleasant characters, the invitee and the licensee, who haunted the courts for years, and it has replaced them by the attractive figure of a visitor, who has so far given no trouble at all.
The draftsman expressed the hope that "the Act would replace a principle of the common law with a new principle of the common law; instead of having the judgment of Willes J. construed as if it were a statute, one is to have a statute which can be construed as if it were a judgment of Willes J."
"The common duty of care," the Act says, "is a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor" -- note the visitor, not the premises -- "will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited or permitted by the occupier to be there."
In consequence, when the window cleaner was cleaning it, it ran down quickly and trapped his hand, thus causing him to fall.
They ought to have had the fire withdrawn before they attempted to seal it up, or at any rate they ought not to have stayed in the alcove too long when there might be dangerous fumes about.
I would hold, therefore, that the occupier here was under no duty of care to these sweeps, at any rate in regard to the dangers which caused their deaths.
This brings us to subsection (4) which states: "In determining whether the occupier of premises has discharged the common duty of care to a visitor, regard is to be had to all the circumstances, so that (for example) -- (a) where damage is caused to a visitor by a danger of which he had been warned by the occupier, the warning is not to be treated without more as absolving the occupier from liability, unless in all the circumstances it was enough to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe."
It was inserted so as to clear up the unsatisfactory state of the law as it had been left by the decision of the House of Lords in London Graving Dock Co. v. Horton [1951] A.C. 737; [1951] 1 T.L.R.
That case was commonly supposed to have decided that, when a person comes onto premises as an invitee, and is injured by the defective or dangerous condition of the premises (due to the default of the occupier), it is nevertheless a complete defence for the occupier to prove that the invitee knew of the danger, or had been warned of it.
I think that the law would probably have developed on these lines in any case; see Greene v. Chelsea Borough Council [1954] 2 Q.B.
The boiler had been lit, and the dangerous starting period had elapsed, at a time when the defective installation was rendered still more defective by the hole in the chimney, and the fatal accident shows that carbon monoxide had been left behind in the alcove.
It can only be said that they would have had a better chance if they had postponed the completion of the work until Saturday morning because there would by then have been more time for the lingering pockets of carbon monoxide to disperse.
The fire could have been put out on Saturday morning, but there is no evidence that that would in itself have removed the carbon monoxide from the alcove.
The opening words of subsection (4), of which paragraph (a) is material, read as follows: "In determining whether the occupier of premises has discharged the common duty of care to a visitor, regard is to be had to all the circumstances, so that (for example) -- (a) where damage is caused to a visitor by a danger of which he had been warned by the occupier, the warning is not to be treated without more as absolving the occupier from liability, unless in all the circumstances it was enough to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe."
But the defendant's agents themselves, in disregard of the warning, did the dangerous act of lighting the fire before the access vents had been sealed.