JUDGE ASTONISHED

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 201, 8 August 1928, Page 7

JUDGE ASTONISHED

HOSPITAL AUTHORITIES CENSURED. EXPRESS DRIVER’S DEATH. Wellington, Aug. 7. Comment on the fact that a man should be suffering from internal injuries and that they should not be detected was made by Mr Justice Sip) when summing up in the Supreme Court to-day, in the case in which Thomas George Needham’s widow claimed £lOOO damages from the Wellington City Corporation, in respect of the death of her husband, who whs fatally injured when his express and a tramcar collided. “It excites one’s astonishment, a little,” said His Hbnour, “that a man should have five ribs' broken and three ribs dislocated, one lung pierced by a broken rib ami his liver torn by a broken rib —that a man, suffering all those injuries, should be taken into the Wellington Hospital, should be examined by two doctors and then be subject to an X-ray examination, and that he should be discharged from hospital as a perfectly well man; and that not one of those injuries should be discovered. I don’t want to say anything disrespectful about the due tors at the Wellington Hospital, but it is certainly very astonishing that, such a thing should happen.” The jury awarded £650 damages, and added a rider that sufficient care was not exercised by the hospital authorities.