WOMAN WITHOUT LEGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19762, 8 October 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOMAN WITHOUT LEGS.

FRAGMENT OF HUMANITY. £4OOO DAMAGES AWARDED. Delivering his judgment with emotion, Mr. Justice AcU i, at the Manchester Assizes, lately awarded £4OOO damages and costs to a 29-year-old woman, who lost both legs and part of her hand in an accident. Tho judge remarked that it was impossible to imagine a more terrible case. A vigorous, healthy, happy, bright young married woman on the threshold of life, in an instant' has been converted into a mere mutilated fragment of humanity," he added, with no prospect and hardly any hope. No money in the world can compensate for such a terrible deprivation of everything that makes life worth living." The action was against the Manchester Ship Canal Company by Mrs. Ada Driver, of Trafford Park, who was carried into court, and placed on a table in front of counsel's bench Counsel explained that as a result of injuries which few would havp survived, Mrs. Driver was helpless. Her husband was able to maintain her, and she had a sister who lived with her and carried her about. If anything happened to her husband, however, she would be dependent on the charity of others. The accident occurred on the Trafford Park Estate and was caused, counsel suggested, by the negligent shunting of an engine pushing nine waggons laden with coal along the railway line which runs through the estate. It was discovered that a shunter's pole was projecting from the trfin. Tnis, suggested counsel,- was the causa of the accident.