AIR CRASH CLAIM

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 307, 24 November 1934, Page 9

AIR CRASH CLAIM

NON-SUIT ENTERED. AGAINST AERO CLUB. Per Press Association. BLENHEIM, Nov. 23. In a judgment of vital importance to aero clubs and aviation transport companies generally, His Honour Mr Justice Blair in the Supreme Court this afternoon entered a non-suit so far as the Marlborough Aero Club is concerned in the case in which Winifred Gertrude Maindonald, of Christchurch, and formerly of lteeiton, widow of the late Edgar Thomas Maindonald, of Iteefton, sought to recover £SOOO damages for alleged negligence resulting in the death of her husband following an aeroplane crash at Blenheim Aerodrome on Sunday, September 24, 1933. Plaintiff also joined as defendant New Zealand Airways, Ltd., a Dunedin company which had rebuilt the illfated aeroplane for the Marlborough Aero Club four months before the accident, aLPging that owing to the company’s negligence a cotter pin was omitted from, or improperly fitted to, an elevator control, thus causing the disaster. The Court reserved decision so far as the action against the company is concerned. His Honour said that, without hearing evidence on behalf of the defendant club, the case presented to him was that there had been a want of a certain ground inspection and a breach of the statutory regulation in that connection, but the evidence of all plaintiff’s witnesses was that the alleged fault in tile machine could not have been discovered by any ordinary inspection. Therefore the cause and effect of the accident had not been established. Furthermore, deceased had signed a contract excluding the club from responsibility for any defect in the machine.

If in view of this he found for plaintiff obviously all passenger-carrying by aeroplane must cease, for it was impossible for anyone with any machinery, aviation or otherwise, to guarantee that some defect might not develop. Therefore in spite of natural sympathy with Mrs Maindonald in the loss of her husband, judgment for a non-suit against the Aero Club must be entered. He reserved judgment as far as New Zealand Airways was concern ed. The Aero Club was allowed costs according to scale with disbursements and witnesses’s expenses. On behalf of New Zealand Airways, Mr J. P. "Ward adduced the evidence of Squadron-Leader T. "W. "White, taken in Australia, to prove that the cotter pin referred to in the action was actually in position when the aeroplane was rebuilt.