COMPENSATION COURT Application Made Against Lyttelton Watersider

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 8

COMPENSATION COURT Application Made Against Lyttelton Watersider

A Lyttelton ntersider said to have earned £l5OO a year before having to go on worker’s cotopensatlon of £OOO a year defended an application in the Compensation Court yesterday to nave the weekly payments stopped, and a lung) sum substituted. The applicant, the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company Ltd. (Mr R. P. Thompson), in proceeding against William Gates (Mr B. McClelland), claimed that any disabUity the latter now suffered was not attributable to an accident which befell Mm at work in January, 1995. Gates, i court was told, bad slipped on greasy straw while avoiding a moving ra of waggons, and bad fallen backwards over another railway line, injuring Ms back.

An orthopaedic surgeon, Stfart Maxwell Cameron, in medical evidence in support of the applicant’s oife, said that Gates, whom he had found to be an obese man of 91, bad turned on “an almost circus-like performance” on medical examination, with features of malingering, neurasthenia, and hysteria. On Gates’s behalf, William Allen Liddell, another ortho-

paedic surgeon, said that he had found him “a very willing sad genuine person.” A third orthopaedic surgeon, Archibald Bruce Mackenzie, said that Gates could not go back to heavy work on the wharves. Saying that there was “a marked difference of opinion” among the doctors. Judge A. P. Blair reserved decision.

m Ubuoml Cue* Evidence was part-heard on a claim for compensation by Ronald Henry Barr (Mr B. A. Barrer), stemming from a fall while employed as a civilian kitchenhand at the Royal New Zealand Mi »n Station, Wlgram, in June, 1993. Barr’s case was said to bo somewhat unusual in that the effects of the injury suffered in his fall had been obscured by i developing appendicitis and then peritonitis, and later suffering a broken leg. The latter injury, said Barr, had Happened when his back had “gone on him,” and he had fallen while alono.in his front garden, having to crawl into his house to summon help. Barr, who said he nad slipped and fallen to his k while carrying empty fruit cases at Wlgram, claimed

eoutpsiuatioß from the AttontayGensral (Mr C. M. Boper), from ths time of bls accident to the present, medical expenses, and a lump-sum ’WSiirel evidence for the plaintiff, Louis Amos Bennett, said that Bi- suffered total disability, with an overlying “neurotic influence” over his baric. Bennett conceded, in cross-examination, that Barr suffered from intermittent claudication (an arterial disease), but said that he “did not wear a brace on his back for that." Mr Roper submitted that the plaintiff’s case was not proved, the evidence for him being hopelessly confused. It was impossible to say which of his present symptoms were attributable to his accident—“which could not have been a very serious matter”—and which were not Judge Blair reserved decision on Mr Roper's motion for a non-suit, and adjourned the hearing for the calling of defence medical evidence tomorrow. Judge Biair will hear Anther compensation cases today, and for the rest of this week.