LOSS OF STUD SHEEP

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19915, 18 April 1939, Page 5

LOSS OF STUD SHEEP

BREEDER’S £IB2O CLAIM SEQUEL TO DIPPING DENIAL OF LIABILITY, (Per Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. The hearing of the evidence of the plaintiff was commenced before Mr. Justice Northcroft and a special jury in the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon in the case in which Alan Grant, of Waimate, sheepfarmer, is claiming £IB2O from Cooper, MacDougall and Robertson Limited, of Manchester, as damages for alleged death and injury to sheep owned by the plaintiff following the use of a dipping preparation manufactured by the defendant company.

It had been stated by counsel for the plaintiff that 37 sheep, including 16 stud rams had died and 156 were affected following the use of the preparation. In a statement of defence filed by the company it was denied that the plaintiff’s rams did, in fact, suffer injury by the absorption ’of poison from the dipping wash through the skin, or that they could suffer injury of that nature and from that cause if the concentrate dip had been diluted and mixed and the rams dipped in accordance with the directions on the labels and with the reasonable and proper dipping practices of ordinarily prudent sheepfarmers. To dip rams in high condition, or when the weather was unsuitable, was contrary to the reasonable and proper practice of prudent sheepfarmers and negligent as involving risks of injury through the dipping operation, but not from the constituents or strength of the dipping wash.

Adequate Warning

The company claimed also that it was not responsible in law for injuries sustained by the plaintiff’s rams owing to the natural effects of a dipping operation. The company had given adequate warning to the plaintiff of all the dangers, of which the company knew or ought to have known, that were likely to arise from the proper and careful use of the concentrate dip according to the general and proper practice. of sheepfarmers. The precaution of putting through the dipping bath ordinary flock sheep first was only a safeguard against the consequences of erroneous or inefficient mixing of the dipping wash and the company was not responsible for the consequences thereof, and if the plaintiff, after erroneously or inefficiently mixing the wash, suffered loss caused by his failure to put through flock sheep first, the defendant company was not liable.

The action is likely to be one of the most protracted heard by 1 the court for some time. His Honour told the members of the jury that their services would be required until well into next week, if not longer. The action was begun more than four years ago and the lapse of time before it has come to hearing is an indication of the widespread nature of the inquiries necessary in the preparation of the evidence.