A Compensation Case.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 10018, 8 December 1908, Page 1

A Compensation Case.

(Per Press Association.) Auckland, December 7. The Arbitration Court has" given its decision in the compensation ca6e brought bv .Tohn Pulii Matthews against Gibson arid Fyfield. The respondents have a sawmill near Tanmaranui. On June 22 Harry Puhi Matthews, a son of the claimant, while workintr 'at the mill, was accidentally killed. The claimant alleges that he and the other members of his family were partially dependent on the earnings of the deceased, and claims £2OO as compensation. The respondents dispute their liability to pay compensation on the ground that the claimant was not the father of the deceased within the meaning of the Workers Compensation for Accidents Act. The claimant is a Maori. In or about the year 1889 he took as a wife one Orewa, who is a Maori, and a member of the Ngalihwi tribe. The union was arranged in accordance with Maori custom, but there was nothing in the nature of a marriage ceremony. The claimant and Orewa have lived together since as husband and wife, and have had nine children. The deceased, Harry Puhi Matthews, was the eldest of these children, and was born on November 4, 1890. In November, 1896, a ceremony of marriage between the claimant and Orewa was nerfonned without any license under the Marriage Acts by the Rev. Taimoana Hapimana, a duly ordained clergyman of the Church of England. The application for arbitration was filed in the present case on September 29 last. On October 23 the case was partly heard, and then adjourned. On October 27, and before the hearing was resumed, the claimant registered the birth of his deceased son, Harry Puhi Matthews, under the provisions of "The Legitimatisation Act. 1894," and on the same day registered the births of three of the other children who had been lmvn to him and Orewa. The question that arose on these Facts was whether the claimant was the father of the deceased for the purposes of the Workers' Compensation for Accidents Act. The Court held that he was. and ordered the payment to him of £l5O compensation: