FOR DEFENDANT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 127, 1 June 1938, Page 11

FOR DEFENDANT.

VERDICT OF THE JURY. BUSH ACCIDENT CLAIM. A verdict for the defendant was given by the jury late yesterday afternoon in the Supreme Court in thecase in which Charles de Thierry, bush worker, £301 special damages and £1000 general damages from James Thomas Whitford, sawmiller, in respect to injuries sustained by plaintiff in July, 1936, while log-hauling in defendant's employment. The hearing of the case before Mr. Justice Fair, with Mr. V. R. Meredith, with him Mr. N. I. Smith, for plaintiff, and Mr. A. K. North, with him Mr. B. H. Hart, for defendant, had occupied three days. In his direction to the jury his Honor said that the evidence required very careful consideration owing to a direct conflict between the statements by | defendant and two witnesses for plaintiff as to the actual cause of the accident. This was stated by two of plaintiff's witnesses to be the breaking of an angle strop, and defendant stated that the strop was not broken when he came on the scene immediately after the accident. His Honor, entering judgment for the defendant, certified for two extra days, and also for second counsel. He allowed £7 7/ for interrogatories. Mr. Meredith was allowed 14 days in which to apply for a new trial, and his Honor reserved decision on the second ca)use of action in which plaintiff made I a claim under the Workers' Compensation Act.