DAMAGES FOR PAINTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26027, 15 December 1945, Page 4

DAMAGES FOR PAINTER

INJURIES SUFFERED IN ACCIDENT DEFENDANT’S APPEAL DISMISSED (PA) WELLINGTON, Dec. 14. The Court of Appeal, by a majority decision, dismissed the appeal of Frederick Vernon Horne, lessee of the. City Club Hotel, Auckland, from the judgment of the Supreme Court, which had dismissed Horne’s motion for judgment in his favour or, alternatively, for a non-suit or a new trial in the action brought by Stanley Speed, of Auckland, a painter, against Horne. The case arose from an accident on February 10, 1942, when Speed, who was working at the City Club Hotel as a painter, fell from a fire escape on the fourth storey and was seriously injured. . . „ After five days’ hearing in November, 1944, the jury had answered lengthy issues in, the plaintiff’s favour and assessed the damage at £3300. After hearing argument on motions for judgment, the Supreme Court had entered judgment in April last in favour of the plaintiff, Speed, for the full damages awarded by the jury and £ 293 costs Two of the appeal judges, Mr Justice Fair and Mr Justice Cornish, held that the matter had been put to the jury on the correct basis by the trial judge, and that the jury had been entitled to find that Speed had not received sufficient warning of defects in the fire escape from which he had fallen, that the defects had constituted a danger which he could not have discovered by full care, and that-Home had not exercised the special care needed on his part. The jury could have found contributory negligence on the plaintiff’s part, but had not done so. Mr Justice Johnston, in a dissenting judgment, said he thought that the jury had been influenced in its findings by the opinion that sufficient attention was not give by local bodies to fire escapes and had thus rested its. verdict upon an improper measure of liability.