LOSS OF AN EYE.

Northern Advocate, 6 September 1913, Page 6

LOSS OF AN EYE.

IRONWORKER'S MISFORTUNE

HARDSHIP OF FIXED SCALE

A judgment that lias its interesting features from the strictly lega! point of view was delivered by his Honor Mr Justice Sim at the Arbitration. Court, Auckland, when dealing with the claim for compensation for the iron worker, Albert Henry Fales. against Seagar Bros.

The plaintiff, during his employment in the defendant's factory cm 2nd October last, suffered an injury in his left eye ty accident which had resulted in the permanent loss of the sight of that eye. Some twenty-four years prior to this accident the plaintiff lost the total vision of his right eye. He had been paid half wages as compensation up to Bth August last, and the question was what further compensation he was entitled to recover.

The plaintiff claimed that the total loss of his sole remaining eye entitled him to compensation as for total permanent incapacity. The defendants, on the other hand, contended that compensation must be assessed, in accordance with scale in the second schedule on the basis that the plaintiff had suffered only the total loss of the sight of one eye.

The language of the Act was clear and explicit, said his Honor, and the court must give effect to it, unless the circumstances were such as to make it impossible to do so. In the piesent case there was no such impossibility. Nor was there any difficulty in assessing compensation in accordance with the scale fixed by the second schedule. The plaintiff, by the injury in question had suffered only the loss of the sight of one eye. It was true that the result in his case was total blindness, but that did not prevent the application of the second schedule, and, in the opinion of the court, compensation must be assessed in this case under that schedule. This, is was observed, no doubt involved a hardship to the plaintiff, but it was one of the results that must be expected to follow when a fixed scale of compensation was established for specified injuries, without any regard to special circumstances. The legislature, when enacting the second schedule, had in view the normal man with two eyes, and omitted to make any special provision for any case such as this, where the loss of one remaining eye resulted in a total incapacity for work. That omission could not be supplied by the court.