A CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 15124, 13 October 1909, Page 7

A CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION.

[Per Press Association.]

WELLINGTON,. October 12. Judgment was given for defendants, with costs £7 '7s and disbursements and witnesses' expenses, by Mr Justice Sim this morning in the case brought before the Arbitration Court by Mary Ellen. Marv and Kathleen Louisa Robinson against Campbell and Burke, builders. The plaintiffs wore the dependeE+3 of Robert Robinson, who died on January 8,1909. Deceased was a carpenter, and in October, 1908, he was working for the defendants on a building at Kaiwarra, and slipped from a ladder and fell to the ground, injuring Jus right hip. Ho received medical attention, and gradually got better. In December he visitod his son at Rangiora, and became ill on the 29th of that month. The plaintiffs alleged that deceased died of pyssmia or blood poisoning, which had its origin in the injury sustained in October. The doctor who attended deceased at Rangiora gave evidence that death was due to heart failure, caused by inflnenaa and pneumonia. On a description of the, deceased's symptoms by his relatives, taken as being correct, four doctors expressed the opinion that death was caused by pyaemia. The Court hesitated to accept the evidence of the relatives in preference to that of the doctor who attended deceased. After reviewing the evidence the judgment stated that the onus was on the plaintiffs of proving that the original injury was the cause of the death of deceased. This could not be proved by mere conjectures by experts. It might have been r-stablishsd by the opinions of experts if those opinions were based on facts which they had observed for themselves, or which could have been proved beyond all reasonable doubt by other 'evidence. The opinions in the oresont case were not founded, the Court considered, on any such basis of fact, and tho plaintiffs bad failed therefore'to discharge the onus which rested on them.