CLAIM BY PARENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 195, 31 May 1934, Page 3

CLAIM BY PARENTS

TETANUS AFTER AN INJURY.

DEATH OF A YOUNG MAN.

(Per Press Association)

| WELLINGTON, May 30. ■ The hearing was resumed to-day of j the case in which Arthur William Ives, a civil servant, of Petone, on behalf of himself and his wife, claimed £6OO for the death of his son, Arthur Robert Ives, aged'24, allegedly from tetanus, after an injury to his finger while stamping out zinc plates with a double-ended press. The defendant is Leatheifold, Ltd. Dr. Mercer (assistant-pathologist at the Wellington Public Hospital) expressed the definite view that the infection was introduced at the time of the injury. Had anti-tetanic serum been administered within an hour of the accident the probabilities were that the tetanus would have been arrested. • He did not agree that the fact that the accident happened in a leather factory should have made those responsible alive to the possibility of tetanus. He agreed that tetanus was associated, among other things, with leather and leather working. It was associated with unbanned leather. His Honor: The hides, really? Witness: Yes. . Witness said the injury could be classified as an injury with machinery, and tetanus was a very rare complication of accidents with This was said in explanation of his reply to counsel in declining to go so far as to say that anti-serum should have been given when lyes first went to hospital.

To his Honor, witness said that had the fact that it was a leather factory been elicited at the time, serum should have been given.