Damages Of £32,706

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31345, 15 April 1967, Page 1

Damages Of £32,706

General damages of £31,000 were awarded by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday on a claim by a former watersider, Richard Hampstead. Hampstead was paralysed from the waist down after an accident during ship unloading at Lyttelton in June, 1963. Leading barristers said last evening that this amount was almost certainly a record in New Zealand. Mr Justice Wilson entered judgment for Hampstead for this amount, plus £1706 special damages agreed on, making a total award of £32,706. ■he plaintiff’s ease was conducted by Mr B. McClelland, with him Mr A. P. C. Tipping.

The plaintiff’s claim for £45,000 general damages was the highest ever made in the Supreme Court in Christchurch. Liability for the accident to Hampstead was admitted yesterday by the defendants—the Lyttelton Harbour Board and Kinsey and Company, Ltd.,—but proportion will be determined by a judge alone after further legal argument Counsel yesterday addressed the jury, and his Honour summed up, solely on the question of amount of damages. Mr McClelland submitted that the £45,000 claimed was not too much for a man who had suffered such grievous injury that he now faced life from a wheel-chair.

The plaintiff’s medical evidence, he said, had been unchallenged. Its effect was that Hampstead, apart from' the pain of the accident, suffered in the legs a dull ache like a toothache, to the extent that even with a wreck of a man like the plaintiff, a further operation was still being considered. Mr R. P. Thompson, leading counsel for the Lyttelton Harbour Board, and Mr R. W. Edgely, for Kinsey and Company, Lt<L, conceeded that substantial damages should be given, although both disputed the amount of £45,000 claimed. His Honour took an hour and a quarter to sum up, and the jury returned its verdict after a retirement of two hours and a half.