WOMAN WITH £400 IN HANDBAG HELD NEGLIGENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 October 1949, Page 2

WOMAN WITH £400 IN HANDBAG HELD NEGLIGENT

WELLINGTON, This Day (P.A.). —The Supreme Court, in a reserved judgment, found in favour of McKenzies (Cuba Street) Ltd in the case involving the loss bv 'Mrs Ellen Kelson, a widow, of Petone, of a handbag containing £422 10s in notes. A jury of four had found, as a matter of fact, that the plaintiff (Mrs Kelson) had left the purse on a counter in the shop, that the bag had been handed by an employee to another woman who claimed it, and that the employee had been negligent but not grossly negligent. Mr Justice Hutchison said in ms judgment that, had only the question of negligence been put to the jury and answered in the affirmative, that might well have led to a verdict for the plaintiff, but when the subsequent question of gross negligence was answered in the negative, that necessarily.meant, he thought, that in the jury’s view the defendant company had not failed to discharge such duty of care as rested upon it as a gratuitous bailee. In his- opinion, said his Honor, the jury’s findings led to judgment for the defendant. His Honor found that the plaintiff was negligent in Walking about a busy shopping street at the time—busy Christmas shopping-—with £422 10s in notes in her handbag and go risking losing it and its contents,