VERDICT FOR £500

Hokitika Guardian, 13 August 1930, Page 7

VERDICT FOR £SOO

i ACTION for damages. 1 ...2 WELLINGTON, Aug. 11. General'damages and special damages amounting in all to £lll2 4s 6d were claimed in the' Supreme Court to-day by William MacGlashan Smith, a waterside worker of Wellington, and his wife, Charlotte Smith, a bookseller, from Gilbert Jepson, a motor, mechanic, as the result of an accident at Island Bay last November in which Mrs Smith was seriously injured.- The case was heard by Mr Justice Ostler and a jury. - Mrs Smith alid her daughter aged seventeen were injured when they were struolc by a , raotor-cyole ridden by ' defendant on a dark night. 1 Mrs Smith was severely hurt, Jepson was fined for negligent driving, and since had filed &« admission of liability, Mr Leicester, for defendant, paid all the jury had to do was to decide what were reasonable damages, Counsel for plaintiff said that since the accident Smith had. kept hip wife’s shop going. After paying all expenses he had been able to make only 13p 6d. Plaintiff’s home had been broken up since the accident. Smith was a waterside worker by occupation and for some prior to the accident he had earned from £3 10s to £4 ids a week. Since the accident he had been able to work' only two days on the Waterfront and he was claiming at the rate of £2 10s a week from November I‘. .The daughter had had to be boarded out and a diaim was being made in- thin respect also. Evidence was given by Dr Gillies, orthopaedic .specialist at the Wellington Hospital, and .l>y the plaintiffs. Mr Treadwell invited the jury to come rto the conclusion that the size of the claim was an outrage and an insult to their intelligence. He submitted that it was a classic example of,an extortionate claim. Acting on bis advice, Jepson had paid in £4OO, That, he contended, was a fair and perhaps even a greater amount than that to which the plaintiffs were entitled, . The jury returned a verdict - for £2OO general and £3OO special damages.