APPEAL COURT

Grey River Argus, 17 October 1936, Page 12

APPEAL COURT

Conviction Upheld (Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, October 16. Judgment was delivered by the Court of Appeal in the case Wallace Robert Boyd, of Putaruru. who had been charged -with receiving motor truck tyres. During the hearing of that charge, evidence was called by the Crown to show that certain cigarette tobacco obtained by theft, had been found in Boyd’s possession. The admissibility of this evidence was challenged, but the Court of Appeal held today that the evidence was properly admitted, and' there was evidence fit to go to the jury that th e tobacco had been dishonestly obtained. The conviction was accordingly affirmed.

Liability of Doctor NURSE’S NEGLECT. DUNEDIN CASE DECIDED. WELLINGTON, October 16. Isabel Daisy Ingram, of Dunedin, married, suffered an injury in the operating theatre of a private hospital. Dunedin, in October, 1932, through the alleged negligence of a nurse in painting part of her body' with iodine containing carbolic acid in solution. In the case removed into the Court of Appeal, on October 9, for argument by’/Justicc Kennedy’, the question to be determined was whether the defendant, Henry’ Walden Fitzgerald, of Dunedin medical practitioner, the operating surgeon, w*as vicariously liable for the nurse’s negligence.

In the judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered to-uay, it is stated that the submissions made by counsel for plaintiff would seem to impose an ’intolerable burden upon a surgeon for. if rightly founded, they’ would impose on him legal responsibility for negligence in the operating theatre, even though he himself exercised all possible care, and even though it was wholly impossible for him to guard against or prevent the damage which actually’ happened. Under conditions of modern surgery, it was impossible for a surgeon himself to do the whole of the work involved in an abdominal operation, as in the present ease, aud he would be consulting, not his own convenience, but the interests of the patient, iu following the usual course of having the work done by what is termed a team. An operating surgeon, in truth, could only’ do part of the work, and if the operation was to be completed quickly’ he must be able to rely upou certain work being done by others, and such was the 'wellestablished practice. It was true that the surgeon was in supreme control, but those subject to that control were skilled collaborators with independent duties, and he did not find it necessary nor would he expect to find it necessary', to intervene, to direct, the manner' in which they discharged those duties. There was no delegation of duty by the surgeon, in the ordinarv sense, fo r he did not intend, and could not have been taken to have intended to do the work of others in the team. It followed that defendant was not vicariously liable for the negligence found against the nurse, and the plaintiff was not entitled' to recover. PRIVY COUNCIL APPEALS. LONDON, October 15. The Privv Council dismissed the appeals of the Attorney General versus the New Zealand Insurance Coy., also Vincent versus the Tauranga Electric Power Board.