COMPENSATION CLAIM

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 262, 1 August 1929, Page 6

COMPENSATION CLAIM

ACTION BY WIDOW. Tlie attention of the Arbitration Court —Mr. Justice Blair presiding, and Messrs. L. J. Schmidt and A. L, Monteith—was taken up yesterday morning in hearing a claim for compensation by Mary Gough. Lower Hutt, widow of the late Richard Thomas Gough, against George Albert Chapman, retired manufacturer of Lower Hutt, the action being the outcome of a fatal accident to plaintiff's late husband Wlnin working for defendant. Mr. E. I*. Bunny appeared for plaintiff, and Mr. C. A. L. Treadwell for the defendant. Plaintiff, In her statement of claiip, said her late husband, Richard T. Gough, was at the time of his death on May 11, 1H29. and tor five years previously, in the continuous employment of defendant, his wages being £4 10s. per week. When Gough was cutting a lime tree on May 11 in tlie grounds of defendant’s residence, he fell from a ladder and sustained an injury which resulted in his death on the evening of that day. The statement said that defendant had declined liability to pay compensation. Plaintiff claimed compensation under the Workers’ Compensation Act. the amount claimed being £93(1, or 208 times the average earnings of her late husband, and also medical, funeral, and other expenses and costs. The defence wps a denial that the deceased was engaged, in cutting standing timber, but it was admitted that he died as the result of a .fall from a ladder. The defence admitted thjit Gough was employed for some time as a gardener, but denied the allegation thAt he had been employed as a general labourer and domestic. The Court reserved its decision.