ESTATE AWARDED DAMAGES

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22245, 9 November 1937, Page 12

ESTATE AWARDED DAMAGES

INJURIES IN MOTOR ACCIDENT

CLAIM UNDER LAST YEAR’S ACT (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) AUCKLAND, November 8. A motor accident which occurred on the Taupo road on April 5, 1936, was the subject of a claim for damages before Mr Justice Callan and a jury in the Supreme Court. The action was brought by Mrs Margaret Phyllis Martin and Albert Victor Baker, jun., as administrators of the estate of Mrs Ellen Elizabeth. Baker, who was killed in the accident. The claim was made against Miss Rubina May Hudson, Mrs Baker was a passenger in a taxicab driven toward Taupo on April 25, and on a bend it met a car driven in the opposite direction by the defendant. Mrs Baker suffered severe concussion, with an injury to the brain, head, and limbs, and she was confined to her bed until her death on October 7, 1936. ITie plaintiffs alleged that the accident was caused by the defendant’s negligent driving, and they claimed £SOO general damages and £256 15s special damages for medical and nursing expenses. An unusual feature of the case was that the plaintiffs admitted that the accident was not the cause of death. Negligence was admitted by the defendant, and the only contest was as to the amount of the damages.

Under New Act Mr I. J. Goldstine said it was the first claim in Auckland made under the Law Reform Act, 1936. Before this act, if a person met with injuries in an accident and died from some other cause the claim for injuries received in the accident died with the victim. Under the new law, however, the executors or administrators of a person’s estate were entitled to claim for the benefit of that estate damages for injuries received in the accident and the resultant pain and suffering. The present claim was of this nature.

His Honour said the case was a novel one, but it was their duty to join in administering the act that had been passed. Parliament had said: “It is not right and decent that a wrongdoer should profit by injured persons dying, and he should not have any good fortune in that way. If an injured person dies the wrong-doer has got to pay into his estate the same money as it would have been proper for him to have paid to the injured person himself.” The jury had to consider for general damages what would have been a fair amount of money to give personally to this woman for two things only—for being kept in bed for six months and for the pain and suffering she endured. The jury awarded £250 general damages and £152 18s special damages, and' judgment was entered accordingly.