INJURY TO EYE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 13

INJURY TO EYE

COMPENSATION CLAIMS

OUT-OF-TIME QUESTION

Compensation based on a weekly wage of 27s 6d for an eye injury alleged to have been caused by part of a machine while she was in the employment of New Zealand Slippers, Ltd., about four years ago, was claimed in the Court of Arbitration today, by Daisy Winifred Dowman aged 22, of Wellington.

Mr. Justice Page presided, and associated with his Honour were Mr W Cecil Prime and Mr. A. L. Monteith. Mr. A. E. Hurley appeared for the plaintiff and Mr. J. F. B. Stevenson for New Zealand Slippers, Ltd. Miss Dowman said she was employed by New Zealand Slippers as a slipper machinist from October 27, 1931, to March 3, 1932. One morning, about a month after her employment began, her machine slip-stitched and she decided to oil it with a view to remedying the defect. Oil splashed on her spectacles and she took them off. While she was bending over the machine again she bent a little too close, and her foot accidentally touched the treadle with the result that a piece of the machine rose and struck her in the right eye. Her mother bathed her eye with boracic lotion and applied cold tea poultices. Although painful, she considered at the time that the injury was only a minor one and that it would wear off. The pain eventually wore off, but she was troubled with a blurring and zig-zagging effect in her right eye. During the winter of this year her eye became worse and she went to the Wellington Public Hospital. She was seen by Dr. J. H. Beaumont, who diagnosed her trouble as retinal detachment of the eye, attributable to a blow.

In answer to his Honour, Miss Dowman said she had been unable to see properly with her right eye since the accident.

Evidence for the plaintiff had not been completed at the time of going to press.

The defendant company, in the statement of defence to the action, denies that Miss Dowman was struck in the right eye by portion of the machine she was working, and that notification of the accident was given to the forewoman and to the manager of the factory, Raymond Victor Shreeve. The company denies that the accident arose out of and in the course of the plaintiff's employment. It contends also that the plaintiff has no cause of action on any ground, and that if she had any just cause of action against the company there is no excuse in fact or in law- for the delay in commencing the proceedings.

The company sets up a further and alternative defence, in which it claims that if any notice of the alleged accident was given by the plaintiff to it the. notice was not given as soon as practicable after the happening in accordance with the provisions of the Workers' Compensation Act, and that, therefore, the action is not maintainable by the plaintiff.