WIDOW’S CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 2

WIDOW’S CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION

PATHOLOGIST’S EVIDENCE ON HEMORRHAGE The hearing of a claim by Ellen Annie Cain, widow, of Christchurch, egainst the New Zealand Refrigerating Company, Ltd., for £lOOO as compensation and £34 9s 6d medical expenses, was adjourned yesterday by Judge Ongley in the Compensation Court for counsel to consider whether they wanted the case sent to a medical referee and, if necessary, for submissions to be made in writing. The statement of claim said that the plaintiff’s husband, William Cain. a slaughterman, died on April 21, 1947, from an accident or strain suffered while he was employed by the defendant company. Mr B. A. Barrer appeared for the plaintiff and Mr A. C. Perry for the defendant company. Giving' evidence yesterday for the defence, Arthur Bushby Pearson, pathologist, director of the Pathological Department at the Christchurch Public Hospital, said he had never seen a person with cerebral hemorrhage recover. “We speak of a person suffering a stroke and to a doctor that would mean one of two things—he has either a hemorrhage from a damaged vessel or he has suffered a thrombosis, or clotting. The immediate effect .would be the same in cither case, but the* victim of the thrombosis might recover. There is no doubt the vast majority of patients a doctor sees after a stroke, where perhaps they are suffering from a paralysis or partial paralysis of one side of the body and quite likely some mental deterioration, have been the victims of thrombosis and not hemorrhage.” He agreed with Dr. Lynch that death had begun on the Saturday morning and nothing could have stopped that process. He did not agree that if Cain had rested on the Friday he would have had a reasonable chance of recovery. His opinion was that, on the Saturday morning. Cain was a doomed man. He -thought the hemorrhage occurred as the result of disease and of disease alone. His Honour said that the case had resolved itself into a medical question.