TEACHER SUED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 212, 8 September 1938, Page 7

TEACHER SUED.

claim; for £iooo.

" TAPPED n BOY ON BACK

JUky rejects complaint.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, September 1,

One thousand pounds was what a father asked in the Supreme Court* this week for what was variously described as a cut and a tap with a cane, inflicted »y a schoolmistress on his eight-year-old son.

The b°y, Lawrence Snell, of qhatswood, had been scalded in July, 1935, at home, and had been wearing *a dressing on the wound.

A few days later the usual play with ink was apparently going on in school, as the teacher went round she hit the boy with a cane she was carrying. The teacher, Mrs. Estella Mary Morison, said she merely gave the boy a tap with a cane, about 18in long, which she was using as a pointer. She said that the boy looked reproachfully at her. and she then learnt that he had a sore back. She looked at the boys back. She saw that'the skin was inflamed, but it was not bruised or 'broken. The boy was not wearing a dressing, she said. The mother, however, said that her boy came home crying, that blood was showing through his coat, and that there was a mark about two inches long. . Medical Evidence. Medical evidence showed that the boy had developed a growth called a clieloid, which had necessitated two operations, but the doctors held- that it was more likely to have been caused by the scald than by the cut with the cane. After this evidence Mr. Justice Owen suggested that a settlement might be reached. They seemed decent people, he said, and it seemed a pity for them to waste their substance in litigation. The parties, however, could not agree.

Summing up, the judge told the jury the law allowed a teacher to use the cane, but a teacher must not use more force than was reasonably necessary in the circumstances. It took the jury only a few minutes to find for defendant.