JURY’S £3500 AWARD SET ASIDE BY COURT OF APPEAL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22914, 5 April 1949, Page 3

JURY’S £3500 AWARD SET ASIDE BY COURT OF APPEAL

(P.A.) • WELLINGTON, April 4. The Court of Appeal set aside the verdict of a jury awarding £3558 damages to Esther Phillips Rutherford against the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board for the death of her husband due to injuries received while employed by the board as a boiler attendant. The case was heard on March 10.

The court held, by unanimous decision. that when a fellow boiler attendant Wilkins, struck Rutherford, Wilkins was not acting in the course of his employment and the hospital board was not liable for his actions. The court further found that there was no evidence that the hospital board knew or should have known that Wilkins was alleged to have a quarrelsome disposition and was a danger to his fellow workers and that there was no failure on the part of the hospital board to exercise proper control and supervision in the boiler rooms.

The Court of Appeal upheld the motion by the defendant board for a non-suit and ruled that there was not sufficient evidence for the case to go to a jury. The costs in the Supreme Court were ordered to be fixed by the trial judge and costs amounting to 35 gns. and disbursements were allowed to the hospital board in the Court of Appeal.