HYDE RAILWAY ACCIDENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1945, Page 7

HYDE RAILWAY ACCIDENT

DAMAGES AWARDED. DUNEDIN, February 17. A curious legal position arose in the Supreme Court at Dunedin yesterday in claims by suppliants in respect of the Hyde railway disaster in June, 1943. Sums exceeding £2OOO were claimed. Legally, the position was that before the accident there existed in the Crown Suits Act a section which limited any claim against the Crown for the death or injury of any person to £2OOO, but on August 26, 1943, this provision was repealed. The difficulty was that no claims in connection with the Hyde accident had been lodged before this date and the result was that in the negotiation of possible settlements of all claims exceeding £2OOO the Crown contended that its legal limit was £2OOO. The claimants, on the other hand, submitted that this limit had been removed by the repeal of the relevant clause of the Act. Thus the claims under the Act for victims of the accident became the subject of expensive litigation or compromise. The cases under review yesterday took the form of a compromise. The Crown advisers had indicated from the inception of the proceedings that anything in excess of £2OOO would be paid as ex gratia payment provided that the Crown could be convinced that such payment was warranted. In deciding whether it would make any extra payment, however, the Crown reserved the right to take into consideration the whole of the circumstances, such as pension and social security payments, and private estate, which are excluded from the assessment of damages in a normal case. . This, it was complained, amounted to the .loading of the Social Security Fund with a charge for Government negligence which it was never intended that the. contributors to the scheme should pay. Mr. Justice Kennedy approved the compromises for the apportionment of damages as follows:— Ethel Emily Conner, for herself and three children, £2675; Thomas David Connor, aged nine, for himself, £1250; Hazel Ailsa McDonald, for herself and four children, £2063. • Judgment was entered by consent.