PLAINTIFF NONSUITED

Evening Star, Issue 22804, 12 November 1937, Page 2

PLAINTIFF NONSUITED

CLAIM FOR DAMAGES The heaving of the case in which James Galloway (Ravcnsbounie) claimed from M'Callum and Co. Ltd. special and general damages amounting to £llO 11s 4d was continued in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday afternoon before Mr J. 11. Bartholomew, S.M. The action arose out of an accident in which the plaintiff was injured while loading timber in the defendant company’s yard. A second claim was brought by the South British Insurance Company Ltd. against M'Callum and Co. Ltd. for £52 6s Bd, the amount paid to the plaintiff through the Otago Harbour Board under a policy of insurance by which the company paid to the board all money that the board was liable to pay under the Workers’ Compensation Act, 1922. Mr A. C. Stephens appeared for the plaintiff Galloway and for the South

British Insurance Company Ltd., and Air A. G. Neill represented the defendant company. Further evidence for the defence was given by James Martin, a sawyer, who said that the stack could not possibly have fallen as was represented by the plaintiff; and Arthur John Joss, a yard labourer, who said that he helped Galloway to load the lorry and then threw the rope, which did not go over the load, but fell on ten of it. Galloway could not have reached the rope from the ground. The stack was to his knowledge quite a well-built one. Some sticks from it had been loaded on to the lorry to make up a full load. The Magistrate said that in this case the difficulty was to ascertain the facts. It was unfortunate for the plaintiff that there was no real corroboration of his evidence and that his statement that the stack was insecurely built -was refuted. There was a great conflict of evidence, and it was difficult to see how it could be an honest conflict. As the evidence had been presented, the plaintiff’s explanation could not be accepted. Accordingly, both claims would he nonsuited, and costs allowed the defendant company.