SUPREME COURT Plaintiff Collapses While Giving Evidence

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 6

SUPREME COURT Plaintiff Collapses While Giving Evidence

The plaintiff in an action for $BOOO damages against the Christchurch Transport Board collapsed while giving evidence in the Supreme Court yesterday.

He is Ralph Keith Wilkins, aged 45, a plasterer, of Wainoni Road, who was taken to Christchurch Hospital after a doctor who treated him in the courtroom said he had suffered a heart attack. Mr Wilkins was admitted to the coronary care unit of the Princess Margaret Hospital. He was on the seriously ill list last evening, and his condition was reported to be fairly comfortable. Mr Wilkins was being crossexamined by Mr J. G. Leggat (counsel for the Christchurch Transport Board), wnen he complained of feeling faint. Mr Justice Macarthur instructed Mr Wilkins to stand down. He was helped from the witness box to the floor of the court. A doctor was called from his rooms in Armagh Court and Mr Wilkins was taken to hospital by ambulance.

Mr Wilkins had been giving evidence for about one hour after the luncheon adjournment when he became ill. When the Court resumed afterwards his Honour discharged the jury of eight men and four women and invited Mr Wilkins’s counsel (Mr G. S. Brockett) to apply for a hearing of the case at a later

date. Mr Wilkins is claiming $BOOO general damages from the Christchurch Transport Board for injuries suffered while alighting from a bus in Wainoni Road on July 28, 1965.

On that day Mr Wilkins was returning home after visiting the Christchurch Hospital for X-rays. He was on crutches because of back injuries.

He told the Court that he left the bus by the rear door. He placed his left leg and left crutch on the footpath while his right leg and crutch were still on the bus step. While he was in this position the bus moved off and he was thrown to the ground, landing on his face. The bus had kept on going. llis face and left wrist were injured and his trousers torn. A woman had helped him to his home where he had felt his wrist going numb. He was taken to hospital where the wrist was found to be broken, and was set in plaster, said witness. It had later been reset and had remained very stiff. Mr Wilkins described and demonstrated a clicking noise in his wrist. Mr Wilkins said he used his left hand to hold the plasterer's hawk, but was now unable to hold the implement for very long because of the injury suffered when he fell from the bus. W'hen doing heavy work he

could hold the hawk for about 20 minutes, depending on the weather.

Just before Christmas, 1965, he had obtained a job as a porter at Princess Margaret Hospital, but had left this after almost dropping a patient. He said that he had fallen from scaffolding while plastering the Workingmen’s Club at Kaiapoi in 1963 and had been away from work for about 18 months. Later he had suffered from rheumatics and needed crutches to move about.

William Alan Liddell, an orthopaedic surgeon, said he had examined Mr Wilkins first in March, 1966, and again in April, 1967. Mr Wilkins had said he had been unable to carry on his work because of an aching wrist, but there had been no apparent change in his condition.

The range of Mr Wilkins’s wrist movements should have allowed him to carry on. Mr Liddell said there would not have to be much wrong with a person’s wrist to prevent him doing a full day’s work as a plasterer.

To Mr Leggat, Mr Liddell said a man suffering from rheumatics would have a short life as a plasterer. It was not always clear as to why some patients suffered pain in joints when they appeared to be functioning normally.