CLAIM FOR DAM AGES DISMISSED.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 5 September 1913, Page 7

CLAIM FOR DAM AGES DISMISSED.

AUCKLAND, Sept. 4. Judgment was given By Mr Justice Sim at the Arbitration Court in the case in which Charles Nicholls claimed £150 from Winstone, Ltd., alleging total incapacity to work as the result of an accident while unloading coal. Three medical experts, said his Honor who examined plaintiff on behalf of the defendant, were of opinion that the plaintiff was not suffering from disease of any kind, and was malingering. His original injury was very slight, and it seemed to the Court highly improbable that such an injury would produce inflammation of the covering of the spinal cord. The original injury was one, his Honor said, which might have produced neurasthenia in a suitable subject. In a case, however, where neurasthenia is alleged to have been caused by such a slight injury as here, there was a suggestion of want of bona fides in the claim. The onus lay on the claimant of making out very clearly the existence of disease. That onus, in the opinion of the Court, had not been discharged m the present ca.so. Judgment was therefore given for the defendant with costs. '