Haemophilic Gains £5033 Damages

Press, Volume C, Issue 29535, 9 June 1961, Page 14

Haemophilic Gains £5033 Damages

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 8. A haemophilic who claimed he became totally disabled as the result of being lifted oil the ground by a director of the company which employed him was awarded total damages of £5033 by a jury in the Supreme Court this evening. The plaintiff. Donald Cardno, aged 21, claimed £lO,OOO general damages and special damages of £533 The defendant was Rotowax, Ltd., manufacturers The jury, after retiring for five hours and three-quarters, found that the director of the company. Jack Taylor, had lifted the plaintiff in the manner claimed, and that the plaintiff's injury was abused or contributed to by negligence on the part of the defendent company. The case was heard before Mr Justice McCarthy. Mr G C. Kent, with him Dr. G. P. Barton, appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr G. L. McLeod for the defendant company "Complete Denial" Opening the case for the defendant. Mr McLeod said the defence would be a complete denial of all the allegations. It was a distressing case to see a youth in the condition the plaintiff was in but that did not necessarily mean that anyone was to blame. A further defence was that if She director did lift the youth up. then he was not acting in the course of his duties as a director or servant of the company John Bell Taylor, a director, of the company, denied in evidence that he had lifted the youth while he was bending down to pick up a pin. or that he had ever skylarked with him Had he known be was a haemophilic, he would not have taken him on at Rotomax. he said. To Mr Kent he said he had not understood that Cardno was susceptible to bleeding He disagreed that three people had told him about the youth’s condition a fortnight before the incident alleged Address to Jury Addressing the jury, Mr McLeod said that Cardno, to have visited the room where he wm allegedly picked up

by Taylor, would have had to work in the company's bagging room at the time, and the evidence pointed to the fact that he did not. If the director Taylor had lifted Cardno as alleged, it could be asked what “aim and object” he had in doing so. “You are asked to believe that Taylor behaved like nothing less than a devil incarnate—to put a boy on a slitting machine who was a bleeder, and liable to epilepsy and to fall on the machine, cut himself, and have a disastrous hemorrhage You are asked to believe that this man. knowing the boy’s condition, deliberately put him on a machine on which he had to thread onen razor blades,” said Mr McLeod.