JURY AWARDS £4750

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25735, 22 February 1949, Page 3

JURY AWARDS £4750

DEATH OF RAILWAYS EMPLOYEE A jury in the Supreme Court yesterday awarded the Public Trustee, as executor of the will of Vernon Rafael Hatcher, a railways employee, the sum of £4750 in a claim against the Crown for compensation for the death of Hatcher in an accident at the Christchurch railway station yards. Mr Justice Northcroft entered judgment for the suppliant for £4785 Is Id. being the amount awarded by the jury and £35 Is Id special damages, agreed upon by both parties. Costs were given against the Crown. Mr C. S. Thomas and Mr R. P. Thompson appeared for the Public Trustee, who proceeded by way of petition of right. Mr A. W. Brown appeared for the Crown.

The petition said that when Hatcher was working on a rake of trucks in the railway yards at the Christchurch station on May J2. 1948, the truck on which he was standing was struck by another rake of trucks beinfe shunted; Hatcher was knocked over the end of the truck and was run over by a following truck, receiving injuries from which he died. He left a widow, Barbara Jane Hatcher, and four young children. It was claimed that the accident was due to th'e negligence of the Railway Department’s servants. The Public Trustee claimed £7OOO as general damages for the widow and children and £5OO for Hatcher’s estate for loss of expectation of life. Mr Brown told the Court that the Crown admitted liability for the accident and that the amount of the special damages was also admitted. Mr Thomas, outlining the suppliant’s case to the jury, said that the claim was divided into two parts—£soo for loss of expectation of life, made on behalf of the estate, and £7OOO, a separate claim, for the dependants. Hatcher was standing on a railway waggon when a rake of trucks was shunted against this stationary waggon. Hatcher was thrown from this waggon and killed almost immediately. The only questions for the jury to decide were how much they would allow for loss of expectation of life and what compensation they would allow the widow and her four young children, whose ages ranged from one year to seven years. The law was that the jury must allow nothing for sentimental loss—the claim must be for financial loss only. On the other hand they could not lower the claim because the widow received any gain through her husband’s death, say a widow’s pension. “At the time of his death, Hatcher was 43 years ot age ” continued counsel. “He was a healthy and energetic man. He had been married eight years. He joined the Railway v Department in 1947 and worked considerable overtime, his average weekly earnings being £9 Ils 2d. In addition he did part-time work for a carrying company and. from these two sources, his average earnings over the period were £l2 11s 2d a week. Further, he did jsome chimney sweeping and also cobbling for his friends. He made most of the footwear for his family and repaired it all. He did repairs to the house, painted it, and papered rooms when necessary. He had a good garden and seldom needed to buy vegetables. He also kept fowls and supplied the home with eggs. Mr Hatcher had two ambitions. One was that he would be able to have his home clear of debt afld the other to build up a fund so h e would be able to educate his children and, give them opportunities he n . e ver had. In his eight years of mar-ried-life he reduced the mortgage on the home, which he had bought for £7OO. to only £34 and his furniture was clear. When he was married he and his wife started off with £4OO and when he died his assets were more than £1000.” Several witnesses gave evidence on the lines of counsel’s statement of the case. That closed the suppliant’s case and no evidence was called for the Crown. Counsel for Crown Mr Brown said there were four main points he would ask the jury to keep clearly before them when they came to decide the amount they would award the widow for the loss of her husband. They must not allow any sympathy they might have for the widow to sway them in their finding: the Crown had admitted, all along, the negligence of its servants and that It must pay damages, so the circumstances of the accident were irrelevant; any damages the jury might award were purely compensatory and were not punitive. The damages must be an amount equal, as near as possible, to the monetary value of Mr Hatcher. Counsel asked the jury to be fair not only to the widow but also to the Crown, the Railway Department in this instance, which was ultimately themselves, the taxpayers. Mr Hatcher had been employed for six months by the Railway Department. His basic wage was £6 7s 6d. and his higher earnings were due to overtime. night work and outside work. He might not have been able to keep up that extra work as the years went on. Counsel submitted that the claim for general damages was immoderate and he suggested that the jury should also cut in half the claim for loss of expectation of life. The jury retired at 2.35 p.m. and returned at 3.30 p.m. with their findings. They awarded £250 for loss of expectation of life, and £4500 as general damages.