COMPENSATION COURT

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29237, 22 June 1960, Page 10

COMPENSATION COURT

Freezing Worker Awarded £194

A claim of £194 13s for loss of compensation payments by Leonard Walter Wheakuku Harris against Thomas Borthwick and Sons. Australasia Ltd., was upheld by Judge Dalglish in the Compensation Court yesterday. Disbursements totalling £86.13s fid for witnesses fees, costs, travelling expenses and medical fees were allowed to Harris. Mr B. A. Barrer appeared for Harris and Mr R. P. Thompson for the defendant

Harris, a married man with three children had suffered an in-

jury to his back when he slipped when trying to pick up a brisket chopper and fell against a table. He was off work from April 23, 1958, to September 24, 1958, during which time be received compensation payments. The compensation payments were then stopped by the company on medical advice, said Mr Barrer.

This was a case where there were two possible causes of Harris being unable to work, said Mr Thompson. The defendant company felt that the real anise of Harris’s pains was not the injury suffered while in the company’s employment, but his developmental disability and physical condition. Archibald Bruce MacKsntie, an orthopaedic Surgeon, gave evidence that he had examined Harris in September, IMS, and found that the injurs caused by the accident had improved sufficiently for Harris to be able to return to work. There was a suggestion of neurasthenia, he Louis Amos Bennett, a surgeon, said he examined Harris on October 15, 1959, and formed the opinion that Harris bad suffered a definite injury at the time of the accident The plaintiff .did have a developmental disability which included a sacrilisatien but there was nothing to show that the disability was reflected in the injury. Rex Blunden, an orthopaedic surgeon, said he had also examined the plaintiff and prescribed physiotherapy for the injury. The X-rays had shown that Harris had some congenital disability, but in his opinion the pains had been caused by the injury suffered at his work.