UNUSUAL CLAIM

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 148, 25 June 1935, Page 10

UNUSUAL CLAIM

DAMAGES FOR SHOCK

A MIDNIGHT ALARM

"Real alarm and serious mental and physical hurt" was alleged in the Magistrate's Court today to have been caused to Mary Alexander, a married woman, when a car driven by John O'Donovan, a. solicitor, mot with an accident immediately outside her bedroom window at 1 Palliser Road at about midnight on December 11. Mrs. Alexander claimed from O'Donovan general and special damages amounting to £300. In her statement of claim she alleged that as she was lying asleep in bed the defendant drove his car so recklessly and negligently that it crashed through a garage adjoining her house and stopped within a few feet of the window of her room. The defendant's action, continued the statement of claim, had aggravated the plaintiff's heart disease, incapacitated her, and caused her to incur expense for medical and hospital attention, medicine, and for assistance in her household. Mr. C. A. L. Treadwell, with him Mr. C. N. Armstrong, appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr. H. F. O'Leary, K.C., for the defendant. Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., was on the Bench. "I have read the statement of claim, and it is a new one to me, I can assure you," said Mr. Mosley. Mr. O'Leary agreed that it was new to him also. "It is a most powerfully and blatantly plain case when the evidence is revealed," said Mr. Treadwell. A great deal of authority would be brought to show the jurisdiction of the Court to award damages, he added. AWAKENED BY CRASH. Within five minutes of midnight, on December 11 last, said Mr. Treadwell, the plaintiff and her husband .were in bed in a room on the ground floor and at the front of the house. The windows looked out on a small garden and a concrete path, and faced the side of a next-door neighbour's garage. The feet of the bed rested against the windows. "While Mr. and Mrs. Alexander were asleep ; a car controlled by the defendant was driven so negligently that it left the road, crashed through the front of the garage, struck and ricochetted off the car in it, and crashed through the side of the garage, continuing on through a fence and finishing up resting against the bedroom windows with the headlights shining into the room. There must have been a. series 'of loud and alarming crashes, because they woke neighbours as far as a quarter of a mile away. Both Mr. and Mrs. Alexander sprang from the bed, not only on. account of the noise but also because of the headlights illuminating the room. Mrs, Alexander had had a chronically weak heart for p many years, but for five years past she had not been seriously incommoded by it. After springing from the bed she collapsed on the floor, needing medical attention then and ever since. Her heart had been definitely injured physically. She was still suffering from the effects of the shock, her heart disease having been revived and aggravated by the action of the defendant. These effects would continue for some time. - There was a Privy Council decision of 1888, said Mr. Treadwell, that mere shock was not enough to sustain damages. That decision had received the dissent of the House of Lords and others and was now regarded as obsolete. EVIDENCE FOR THE PLAINTIFF. The evidence of Dr. M. M. Mcßae was that he had known Mrs. Alexander since 1925, when she was 50 years old Before the accident she was in good health but after it she was suffering from a severe shock to the nervous system. . Dr. F. T. Bowerbank, a specialist in heart troubles, gave detailed evidence of the condition of Mrs. Alexander's heart. There had been some degree of failure previous to the shock, and the shock would throw sudden work on to the heart and have adverse effects, he said. Since 1888 the knowledge of the heart had become revolutionised. John Alexander, the husband of the plaintiff, and an unemployed man, said that he was in bed with his wife at their home at 1 Palliser Road just before the accident. "There was a terrific crash and a car stopped up against the house with the lights on," he said. "I sprang out of bed and so did my wife. She 'collapsed on the floor. I got. her back into bed ... and telephoned for Dr. Mcßae." The witness saw the defendant trying to back his car away. It had wrecked the four doors of the garage and after knocking the garaged car through the back of the garage it had wrecked the side of the garage and therf- a fence before stopping against the house. Hundreds of cars went round the corner opposite his house every day and this was the first accident of its kind. Mrs. Alexander had been able to do all the housework before the accident, but since then she had been able to do nothing. Witness now did all the housework and cooking. For the last week-or two she had been up for a few days at a time and in bed for a few days. After the accident they had had to employ a woman for three months. His wife was far from, well yet. To Mr. O'Leary the witness said that he did not know before the accident that his wife had had heart trouble. They had been married, for sixteen years. Geoffrey Newman, of Maida Vale Road, said that his house was a quarter of a mile away from Alexander's. At about midnight on December 11 he was awakened by a loud, startling noise. He got up and looked out the windows. It sounded to him as if a car had gone over a bank and crashed on to the beach at Balena Bay. (Proceeding.).