COMPENSATION CLAIM

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24960, 22 August 1946, Page 3

COMPENSATION CLAIM

MEDICAL EVIDENCE HEARD BY COURT

Detailed medical evidence concerning the death of Andrew Thomas Fotheringham, aged 60, a cleaner, employed by the Railways Department, was given during the hearing of a claim in the Compensation Court before Mr Justice Ongley yesterday. The hearing was adjourned to Wellington, at a date to be decided, so that further evidence could be brought forward.

Jessie Ann Fotheringham, the widow, claimed £lOOO compensation from the Crown, in addition to the sum of £25 3s for funeral expenses, on the ground that she was the sole total dependant of Fotheringham, who died after an accident which occurred while he was cleaning the outside of a railway carriage at the Addington Workshops on December 18, 1944.

Mr E. D. Blundell, who represented the claimant, said that Fotheringham was cleaning a first-class carriage which was jacked up so that the lowest step leading on to the platform was three feet from the ground, which was asphalted. He walked down an inclined plank which had been left as part of a scaffolding used by painters. This plank ran down to the ground below the steps of the carriage. When he was opposite the steps he stretched his foot about two feet six inches to get up, and at the same time lifted his hands up to the handrail. In pulling himself up and putting his other foot up to the* platform, he was seen to slip. He fell a distance of between four and five feet to the ground. Fotheringham wore shoes with iron toe plates. Fotheringham was, unknown to himself, in a state of coronary insufficiency; added Mr Blundell. He weighed 12 to 13 stone, and his life history was that of a perfectly healthy person who had never complained of heart pains. The evidence would show that if he slipped as a normal mishap, the fright and shock to a man in his condition were sufficient to bring on cardiac seizure and cause death.

Arthur Bushby Pearson, pathologist at the Christchurch Public Hospital, during examination by Mr A. W. Brown (Crown representative), said that his finding at a post-mortem conducted on the body of Fotheringham was that the circulatory system was generally very bad, and that the disease from which he was suffering was progressive to a very grave degree. It was highly probable that m those conditions he would drop dead even without any effort at all. The cause of his death was ventricular fibrillation, which was a fluttering of the heart and a loss of its rhythmical beat- If he did slip and realised that he was going to fall, surely he must have known that it was not going to be a great fall. It did not seem that this would cause great fear or emotion.' He, the witness, had heard of heart failure being brought on by emotional shock, but he had never examined anyone who had died in this way.. Cross-examined by Mr Blundell, the witness said that all the causes of death by ventricular fibrillation were not known to medical science. Some of those which were known, from what he had read, included effort and severe shock. It was just as likely that death would occur to a person like Fotheringham while in a state of rest. From long experience, he thought ventricular fibrillation could occur, for instance, when a man was standing talking to his friends in the street, or walking down the path of his garden. If Fotheringham’s medical history disclosed circumstances where there was effort or great emotion or great shock, and no other circumstances, it would be a reasonable inference that one of these factors had induced ventricular fibrillation. Medical science did not know the effort required to bring this on; and it was usually assumed it would be a violent or abnormal effort to the person concerned. Fotheringham was in the position where a very small effort would be very dangerous to him. He was a candidate for sudden death.

Malcolm Kennedy Gray, a medical practitioner, ssid that he did not know anything about shock or emotional stress producing death, although he had read about it in novels. The disease itself was just as likely to produce death, jvhich could occur anywhere. It was not capable of proof that ventricular fibrillation was a final mode of death. It was impossible to decide the final event in death, although ventricular fibrillation was a possibility. To Mr Blundell, the witness said it was a possibility that ventricular fibrillation had not commenced until after Fotheringham had fallen, as the evidence showed that he had made several movements after hitting the ground. At this stage the hearing was adjourned. Application for Settlement John Weir, a labourer, of Ashburton (Mr A. C. Perry), applied for approval of settlement and direction for payment of the remaining sum of £350 10s 3d compensation money which had been awarded result an accident in which he fell off a Public Works Department truck at Palmer Head, Wellington, on December 9, 1943, and was totally incapacitated. Mr A. W. Brown, who appeared for the Public Works Department, said that it would be satisfactory if the weekly payments of compensation that were being made were commuted, and a single payment made, not to the Public Trustee, but to James Weir and Mary Ann Rattray, the trustees with whom the injured man was living.

An order to this effect was by his Honour, subject to an affidavit being obtained from a solicitor to the effect that the trustees were directing the money correctly.