SUNSTROKE CLAIM

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1933, Page 9

SUNSTROKE CLAIM

COMPENSATION CASE

DOCTORS' EVIDENCE

(By Telegraph.— I'ress Association.)

AUCKLAND, September 13,

An assertion that while working as a quarry'man in a confined space exposed to the sun he contracted sun.-. stroke or heat apoplexy was the basis of a claim for compensation made ■iff the Arbitration Court by Robert Hunter Dowie, nged SC, of Tc Kuiti, against the AVaitoino Lime Co., Ltd. Ho cout ended-that this was ap accident within tho meaning-of the Act. The company denied that tho plaintiff worked in an enclosed or exposed place. Dr. A. Eisdell Moore said. that ho liad had considerable- experience in tho tropics and Mesopotamia of heatstroke and sunstroke. Heatstroke such as might occur in a stokehold was different from tropical sunstroke. This man's case was not; typical of either, but it was a case of the effects of heat. The plaintiff was in a condition of found neurasthenia, and he would suffer from a permanent disability on account of a definite heart weakness, and of the grave risk he would run if he had to work in heat again. Ho would probably hare a 15 per cent, permanent disability on account of his heart. Sunstroke was a very rare thing here. " Dr. P. F. Carrick said that ho had had 34 years'' tropical experience in India, Burma, and/Persia. Ho considered the plaintiff's case was one of heatstroke, but ho would not particularise it as heat exhaustion. It was sun traumatism, which was the result of direct exposure to the sun. Anything over 85 degrees of atmospheric temperature was considered dangerous in temperato climates, and anything over 110 degrees in the tropics. Ho had found tho plaintiff in a state of marked neurasthenia. His heart was somewhat disorganised, and he had a pleuritic lung. Witness recalled a wartime incident in which 25 men died from heatstroke in a, troop train from Karachi to Peshawar, although thero had been no direct exposure to the sun. Tho case was adjourned.