Damages For Disease From Pigeon Droppings

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30401, 28 March 1964, Page 13

Damages For Disease From Pigeon Droppings

(N Z. Press Association —Copyright)

SYDNEY. Mar. 27.

A railway employee was awarded nearly £BOO yesterday for a disease he contracted from pigeons at the Wollongong railway yards in New South Wales.

Richard Thomas Field, aged 29, was awarded the damages against the Commissioner for Railways. Field sued the Commissioner for the difference between his sick pay and his wages between September, 1962, and April, 1963, and also medical expenses. A Sydney specialist. Dr. P. N. Francis, told Judge Holt in the district court that he believed Field had contracted the disease due to either inhaling the dust from pigeon droppings or from drinking

water contaminated by pigeon droppings. The doctor said that very little was known of the organism and that some humans carried it in their bowels, but he knew of no case in Australia of people contracting the disease from contaminated water.

During the hearing Field said that he had to clean a concrete water tank twice a week and a shed where pigeons nested. He said he became ill in June, 1961, after seeing bright yellow lights before his eyes. His chest was affected, his speech was slurred, and be had suffered from fits of temporary blindness.

Field said that in September, 1962 he collapsed and had regained consciousness seven weeks later in Sydney Hospital.