MOTHER CLAIMS £928

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20385, 23 October 1940, Page 11

MOTHER CLAIMS £928

DEATH OF DAUGHTER WELLINGTON HOTEL FIRE PROPRIETOR SUED (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. A claim for damages totalling £9OO and £2B 3s special damages was begun in the Supreme Court to-day by Olive Gwynne, the mother of Kathleen Olive Matthews, a 17-year-old waitress, who perished in the fire in Lloyd’s Hotel on February 17, against the hotel proprietor, Robert Stuart Wilson, before the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers and a jury of 12. Mr. Mazengarb appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr. E. Parry for the defendant. The plaintiff contends that her daughter's death was caused by breaches of legal duties the defendant owed to the girl as the occupier of the hotel and as the employer. The breaches of duty alleged were: Lodging the girl in the room on the top floor or attic away from all other guests and members of the staff, lodging her in a room the window of which was nailed so that it would not open from the inside, and lodging her on a floor to which alternative stair access had been blocked and the only means of egress was down the main staircase, exposing her to dangerous and unnecessary risk by lodging her in a room and on the floor mentioned, lighting a fire or allowing a fire to be lit on the ground floor in close proximity to a disused hatchway or chute which ran up alongside the main staircase from the ground floor to the top staircase, failing to take adequate precautions to confine the fire to the fireplace in which it was lighted, removing burning embers from the fireplace and negligently placing them in a receptacle or receptacles not suitable for the purpose and thereby setting Hie building on fire, failing to watch or direct any person to watch tiie premises and guard against an outbreak of fire, failing to warn the girl of the outbreak of fire so that she could escape from the top floor before the fire spread up the staircase, failing to use the means available’ to him of freeing the girl from the floor in which she was entrapped after the outbreak of fire which caused her death/