Examination delay would be significant—witness

Press, 13 March 1987, Page 8

Examination delay would be significant —witness

A diagnostic pathologist who did post-mortem examinations on two racehorses, which died in a paddock shortly before they were to be flown to the United States in 1983, completed nearly two days of evidence and cross-examination yesterday in a fraud trial relating to the deaths of the horses.

Yesterday was the fourth day of the trial of a veterinarian with an interest in racehorses, Henry Mervyn Graham Williamson, aged 55, before Judge Laing and a jury in the District Court. Williamson is charged that on or about March 23, 1983, at Timaru, he used an insurance claim form to obtain for himself a pecuniary advantage of $168,000. He has denied the charge. He is represented by Mr K. N. Hampton and Ms S. B. Lewis. Mr G. K. Panckhurst appears for the Crown.

The trial, which began on Monday, will continue

into next week. The Crown’s case is expected to finish, and the defence case should start on Monday. Williamson is alleged by the Crown to have caused the deaths of the horses and to have then made an insurance claim for $168,000 — the amount he had claimed he sold the horses for, to a purchaser in the United States. Williamson also is alleged to have "engineered” a day’s delay in informing veterinarians of the horses’ deaths, so that invading bacteria could cloud the examination of cause of death. Nine of the 19 Crown witnesses in the case had given evidence by late yesterday. Yesterday morning James Bruce Hutton, a diagnostic pathologist with the animal health laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, at Lincoln, completed his evidence, which began at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

His evidence-in-chief continued until 11.18 a.m. on Wednesday, and he was cross-examined during the next four sessions, until mid-morning yesterday.

Dr Hutton gave evidence of the post-mortem examinations on the two horses, after he had been called into the case by a practising veterinary surgeon. Dr Hutton was asked if there was any significance in a day’s delay between the deaths of the horses and his examination.

He said this time span was very significant in his ability to assess the changes in many of the tissues that had been taken.

It made the results of bacteriology a lot more difficult because the postmortem invading bacteria could overgrow significant bacteria.

The evidence of Crown witnesses heard so far has taken more than 100 pages to record.