SWAB CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 189, 12 August 1938, Page 8

SWAB CASE.

SECOND HEARING.

THE FINAL STAGES.

CASE FOR DEFENCE ENDS

The concluding stages of the rehearing before Mr. Justice Fair and a jury in the Supreme Court of the claim by Mrs. Mary Margaret Barry (Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Winter) against the Auckland Hospital Board for £1800 damages for alleged negligence in the performance of an operation on her were reached to-day.

The allegation on which plaintiff based her claim was that at an operation in the Auckland Hospital in January last year a small swab was left in her body. Evidence was given yesterday afternoon by Dr. F. J. Gwynne and Dr. W. W. Main as to the X-ray examinations made prior to the final operation by Dr. J. W. Bridgman and to the first operation by Dr. J. Dreadon respectively. This was on the lines of the evidence at the first hearing. Surgeon's Conclusions. Dr. K. MacCormick, senior surgeon at the Auckland Hospital, gave evidence in which he stated the opinion that the. course of Mrs. Barry's illness and eventual recovery, as given in evidence, was quite explicable by an ordinary train of disease apart from the presence in her body of any swab. Cross-examined by Mr. Sullivan, today, the witness said that ordinarily he would give greater weight to what the operating surgeon said than to what the assisting nurse observed, but in this instance, from all the circumstances, he felt impelled to agree with what Mother Mary Agnes said that a large mass was not removed by Dr. Bridgman. He was of opinion that there was a mass of diseased ovary removed, but in fragments. He doubted the possibility of removing in a mass the diseased cavity wall of an abscessed ovary, such as described.

To His Honor: His statement in this respect had regard to the supposition that the presence of a foreign body would make the adhesions of the cavity wall to the organs very dense. To Mr. Sullivan: It'was the description by Dr. Bridgman in his evidence of the thickness of the cavity wall and the density of the adhesions which influenced his opinion that the removal of the cavity wall in a mass was practially impossible.

Dr. Frank Macky gave evidence supporting the views of the previous witness.

This concluded the evidence in the case, and this afternoon counsel addressed the jury and his Honor summed up.