ARBITRATION COURT.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10742, 5 September 1913, Page 5

ARBITRATION COURT.

THE LOSS OF AN BYE. Per Press Association. Auckland, September 4 At the Arbitration Court to-day judgment was delivered by Mr Justice Sim in the claim by Albert Henry Hales against Seagar Bros. The plaintiff had lost an eye while in defendant’s employ, and having lost the other eye 34 years before, claimed compensation for total permanent incapacity. The case, said the Bench, in giving judgment, seemed to come within the second schedule of the Act, fixing compensation for the total loss of the sight of one eye at 30 per cent of the amount payable in the case of total incapacity. Section 8 of the Act provided that compensation for injuries mentioned in the second schedule should be assessed in the manner therein indicated. The language of the section was clear and explicit, said His Honour, and the Court must give effect to it, unless the circumstances were such as to make it impossible. In the present case there was no such impossibility, nor was there any difficulty in assessing compensation in accordance with the scale fixed by the second schedule. Plaintiff by the injury in question had suffered only the loss of the sight of one eye. It was tree that the rsult in his case was total blindness, but that did not prevent the application cf the second schedule, and in the opinion of the Court compensation most be assessed in this case under that schedule. This, he observed, no doubt involved hardship to the plaintiff, bet it was one of the results that must be expected to follow when a fixed scale of compensation was established for specified injuries without regard to special circumstances. The Legislature when enacting the second sciieduie had in view the normal condition of a man with two eyes, and omitt d to make special provision for a case of this kind, where the loss of the one remaining eye resulted in total incapacity for work. The omission could not be supplied by the Court, and plaintiff therefore was entitled for damages by schedule to be calculated according to the rule laid down in Hough v. Prouse Lumber, Ltd.