CLAIMS AGAINST PUBLIC BODIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3315, 26 September 1917, Page 15

CLAIMS AGAINST PUBLIC BODIES.

NAPIER, September 18. In a judgment just delivered at the Supreme Court in Napier in the case of Lyttle and Wright v. the Borough of Hastings, Mr Justice Edwards said that plaintiffs had suffered a hardship in not having their case decided on its merits owing to the unsatisfactory state of the- law relating to claims for compensation against public bodies in respect of nuisances and similar causes of action arising- out of publio works. The plaintiffs claimed damages in respect of the alleged bursting of a borough drain through the working of a pump used twothirds of the way down the drain, where the drainage was dammed back, raised several feet, and then allowed to fall, the force of gravity bejng thus utilised to overcome the pressure of the flood waters banking up the sewage. Plaintiffs alleged that their crops were damaged and _ their land permanently injured by the bursting of the drain and the cscapo of sewage consequent on the working of the gravity pump. The pumping station had been erected since 1914, and there was then no suggestion of tho probability that any damage would result to anyone through the work. It was not till May, 1916, that the trouble arose, The Publio Works Act debarred a claim after 1915, so that plaintiffs, through the defective state of the law, were Without a remedy. His Honor stated that the defenoe had several times referred the Bench to his own judgments and those of other judges, but the Act had been twice consolidated and several times amended since without giving effect to those decisions. His Honor suggested amending tho drastio provisions of tho Statute either _by materially extending tho period within which a claim may be preferred or by making the period of limitation run from the first serious actual damage, and not from tho. completion of work.