£2200 DAMAGES FOR BABY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23332, 26 October 1937, Page 3

£2200 DAMAGES FOR BABY

BITTEN ON NOSE BY PARROT NINE DAYS AFTER BIRTH (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Oct. 15. Damages of £2200 were awarded by a Supreme Court jury to Kathleen Patricia Noonan, an 18-months-old baby girl, for injuries caused by a parrot as she lay in her crib in a Bathurst private hospital. The jury recommended that the money should be applied solely to medical and surgical treatment for the child until she is 21. The baby plaintiff, through her father, claimed £SOOO from Nurse Taljula Mahoney, who is principal of the hospital, alleging permanent disfigurement and injuries. It was claimed that while the baby, then nine days old, was lying in her cot on the hospital veranda, a Papuan parrot kept by Nurse Mahoney had bitten off the tips of three fingers and the tip of the nose. Medical evidence was given that the facial disfigurement could not be remedied by plastic surgery until the child was 14 years old, possibly not then, and that she would suffer psychological disabilities from the knowledge of her disfigurement. No permanent treatment could be given to the child’s face, until growth had stopped, said a psychiatrist, and there would always be psychological effects of the injury. “ Children are unconsciously cruel,” he said. “ They make remarks and draw attention to any disfigurement. I think this little girl will have a very unhappy time with other children, tending towards making her shun playmates, become self-conscious, and suffer from an inferiority complex." Nurse Mahoney, who denied that she had kept a parrot, “ wild, fierce and mischievous,” as alleged, said that the parrot was a tame bird. She saw a magpie in the hospital yard two days after the baby was attacked, and believed it was responsible for the injuries. A child she had adopted, and who was now six years and a-half old. had played with her parrot daily. She denied when cross-examined, that the bird had bitten that child on the nose. The parrot was brought into court during the hearing and placed on the witness stand. At the suggestion of opposing counsel, Nurse Mahoney knocked it off the rail with her hand. It fluttered, squawking, to the bar table, and was captured on the floor by a court officer.' Nurse Mahoney said she had taken two visitors to see the baby, lying in one of five bassinets on the veranda. She saw the green parrot on the railing. The babyk face was covered with blood, and she knocked the parrot off the railing. The parrot was not on the bassinet, and she knocked it from the railing because the birds soiled the veranda A plastic ;urgeon said that in a case where a dog had bitten a child’s nose, the patient showed natural improvement as he grew The best treatment would be by fret grafting. The jury found that the injuries were caused by the parrot, and that there was negligence.