Supreme Court DECISION RESERVED ON MOVE TO UPSETVERDICT

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29178, 12 April 1960, Page 24

Supreme Court DECISION RESERVED ON MOVE TO UPSETVERDICT

, Legal argument concerning motions to upset a Greymouth jury’s verdict in a claim for £5OOO damages brought by a sawmill hand against his employers was heard by Mr Justice Adams in the Supreme Court yesterday. In the original action heard before his Honour and a jury at Greymouth earlier this year, William Alexander Muir, aged 38, baker’s assistant and former sawmill hand (Mr W. D. Taylor), sued McCallum and Company, Ltd., sawmillers (Mr J. ■D. Tucker) for £5OOO damages for Injuries to his hand caused by a saw in the course of his employment with the defendant company.

The jury returned a verdict awarding the plaintiff £2lBO 4s 6d damages, reducible by 40 per cent because of the plaintiff's own contributory negligence. Mr Taylor moved that judgment entered according to the jury’s verdict be set aside, and that judgment be given to the plaintiff for the full amount of £2lBO 4s 6d. Counsel also moved, alternatively, that the Court set aside the jury’s and order a new trial, cr a tlal limited to questions of the plaintiff’s own contributary negligence and culpability. The plaintiff had been working in the normal way and had taken no specific risk, counsel submitted. A saw was a most dangerous tool, and the jury’s verdict

that the. plaintiff was negligent to anything like 40 per cent was against the weight of evidence. Mr. Tucker opposed both moCoris. He submitted that counsel for the plaintiff had not, at the conclusion of the trial, moved that' judgment be altered to give the plaintiff the full amount of damages awarded by the. jury, but merely moved for time to enter a motion for a new trial. Counsel submitted that if a new trial were ordered that trial should be limited to questions of negligence. He submitted there had been considerable evidence to point to the plaintiff’s own negligence and argued that the action of counsel for the plaintiff in agreeing that questions concerning the plaintiff’s negligence be included in the issues put to the trial jury supported the view that there had- been evidence of the plaintiff being negligent. Counsel submitted that the Court should be most reluctant to set aside a jury’s apportionment of fault, and cited cases in which the principle was quoted. His Honour: I do not see what reluctance has to do with it If I And that the jury’s verdict is one which 12 reasonable men could not possibly hold, I shall have ho reluctance whatsoever in setting it aside. His Honour reserved his decision.