DOCTOR’S MISTAKE

Southland Times, Issue 22378, 18 July 1934, Page 12

DOCTOR’S MISTAKE

WRONG FINGER ASIPUTATED. ACCIDENT* TO SCAFFOLDER. A mistake by a doctor who amputated a sound finger instead of an injured one, and had to pay £5OO damages. was disclosed in London last month. In an action at Bow County Court, Messrs John Mowlem and Co., Ltd., builders and scaffolders, asked for a review of an award of 17/6 a week made in favour of Ernest Mudge, a scaffolder, owing to his refusal to have an operation on the stump of a finger which had been amputated. It was stated that in 1932, after Mudge had had an accident at the Battersea Power Station, the doctor amputated his index finger, which was sound, and that the middle finger, the injured one, was amputated subsequently. Mudge brought an action against the doctor and recovered £5OO damages. The order for 17/6 a week was made, it was added, when it was assumed that Mudge would have a further operation on the stump of the middle finger. Mudge, however, found that the applicants could not employ him, as owing to the amputation of his index finger he was unfit to be a scaffolder. Judge Konstam held that Mudge had acted in a “common-sense and reasonable way” in refusing to have the operation, and. entered an award for him with costs.