DAMAGES AWARDED

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 11

DAMAGES AWARDED

Widow’s Claim For Loss of Husband PIPE BRIDGE FATALITY The hearing of the claim of Margaret Cree Ritchie against Messrs. Barton Ginger and Co., Ltd., for herself, and on behalf of her 12-year-old son, for £3OOO general damages, and £l4/19/- special damages, arising out of the death of her husband, Robert Kennedy Ritchie, on December 1 last, caused by a motorcase weighing one ton falling on him from a lorry, was concluded in the Supreme Court at Wellington yesterday. The jury, after a retirement of two hours and 20 minutes, awarded plaintiff £1250, with costs according to scale. “Quite a .reasonable amount, Mr. Foreman,” said his Honour, Sir Sir John Reed. “It is about what I would have awarded.” A few minutes after the decision Mrs. Ritchie fainted. Mr. H. F. O'Leary, K.C., with him Mr. E. D. Blundell, appeared for plaintiff, and Mr. O. C. Mazengarb, with him Mr. W. E. Leicester, appeared for defendant company. Evidence was given by W. F. Mams, who has been in the carrying business for 18 years, and for four years carried large cases containing motor parts for General Motors, Limited. In 75 per cent, the cases were “double banked,” but never were they roped. They were considered perfectly safe without roping, owing to their weight.

Norman Bernard Black, a storeman, in the employ of the Wellington Harbour Board, said he considered there was nothing unsafe in the lorry going out on the day of the accident, loaded as it was, and the cases not roped. William I. J. Blyth, with 33 years’ carrying experience, said he never roped similar heavy cases. Their weight was sufficient to keep them stable.

Bernard C. Kirk, Customs agent for the Ford Motor Company, said he had never seen the motor cases roped to the lorries. He had followed the lorry containing the cases which fell off on the pipe bridge for a mile and a quarter, and considered the load “a well-stowed” one. The car he was driving was “hit a terrific blow” by the wind when he was crossing the pipe bridge, causing it to swerve from the centre of the bridge to the footpath on the northern side. He had lived in Wellington nearly all his life and considered the day was one of the gustiest he had experienced. In his opinion had the load been roped one of two things would have happened: either the ropes would have broken, or lorry, cases, and driver would have gone over the bridge into the river. Richard James Marshall, carrier, said he would not have hesitated to go across the pipe bridge on the day of the accident with such a load as two motor cases, unroped. Lorry Driver’s Evidence. Cecil David Trilford, the driver of the motor-lorry from which the cases fell, said he had taken about 150 similar loads from the Pipitea Wharf to the Ford Company’s works. He had never roped the cases nor did he know of anybody else who did. The load was quite a usual one. The road vibration could not shift the load. The first thing he knew that anything was wrong was when the lorry “lifted” as he was about to go down off the bridge after crossing it. That was when the cases fell off. Under cross-examination he said that he would not have taken such a load out in any wind that would have been severe enough to shift the load. He would not deliberately take a risk. The wind, in his opinion, was not unusual for Wellington when he left Pipitea Wharf, Since the accident he had not taken a load of more than one big case at a time.

Re-examined, witness said he did not think the roping of the load would have made any difference. Either the ropes would have broken or, if they had held, the lorry would have been blown over with the load.

George Lidgett, engineer, said he did not consider that the model used in court on Thursday by Mr. Mitchell reproduced exactly the conditions existing at the time of the accident. If the load was securely lashed the lorry and load would have been blown over. In his opinion the wind was blowing harder on the day of the accident than at any previous time in his experience of ten years’ residence in the Hutt Valley. Cross-examined by Mr. O’Leary, he said it would have been an ordinary precaution to have lashed the load were it known, at the time of the loading, that a wind of gale force was blowing.