Hotel fire destroyed £7000 load
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• A loss of 10 minutes in summoning the fire brigade to a fire which broke out inside the Sunset Transport Hotel, Penkridge, Staffs, in May, 1968, would probably not have prevented the burning of a lorry parked close to the hotel, a judge decided in the High Court last Friday.
Deputy Judge Tudor Evans, QC, dismissed with costs a £7500 claim by IBM United Kingdom Ltd, of Chiswick High Road, London W, against the hotel owners at the time, Restadver Ltd. The sum represented the agreed value of computer equipment totally destroyed when the lorry caught fire.
The hotel owners denied negligence and alternatively said that whatever they had done the equipment would have been destroyed.
The judge said that the equipment was being sent from Glasgow to London. IBM employed a carrier firm whose driver, a Mr Ferguson, stayed the night at the hotel, parking his lorry 18 inches or so from the building. There were notices saying "Parking at own risk".
In the early hours a fire broke out in one of the rooms, said the judge. It was clearly started by a lighted cigarette. It spread with remarkable speed, flames coming out of the open window and setting alight the lorry's roof.
It had been urged that if there had been an electric alarm system, Mr Ferguson would have been aroused more quickly and would probably have gone outside and saved the lorry. But the judge said he did not think that the absence of such a system made the slightest difference to the fate of the equipment.