APPEAL COURT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 111, 31 October 1911, Page 2

APPEAL COURT.

. • A LIFE INSURANCE CASE. By-Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, October 3D. Reserved judgment of the Court of Appeal was delivered this morning in the case of Lucena v. National Mutual Life Association. The Court ..held that the protection afforded medical men and their patients by section 8 (2) of the Evidences Act, 1908, by which a medical man cannot be compelled, without consent of his patient, to divulge in any civil proceeding any communication made to him in his professional character by such a patient, applied only to communications oral or written or by signs to the physician or surgeon necessary to enable him to prescribe or act for the patient, and did not extend to information gained by the surgeon during an examination of a patient in ttie course of an operation. The Court a'djourned till December 18. CONCEALMENT OP BIRTH. Wellington, Yesterday. The Appeal Court in the appeal case Rex v. Brown held that the judge's direction of the jury was proper, and was one of concealment of birth, and the Judge directed the jury that it was not necessary they should have evidence of the finding and identification ■o£ the body of the child before finding the prisI oner guilty.

A BANKRUPTCY CASE. •. , Welliiigton, Yesterday.The Chief Justice, to-day granted George Pinnoek, taxi-cab proprietor, his discharge from bankruptcy. Counsel for the Official Assignee said the Official Assignee wanted an opportunity to refute the charges miide against him of having not dealt with this bankruptcy 'impartially. The suggestions of impropriety were not justified. The Judge said the Assignee should not be too thin-skinned when people he was looking after found fault with liiin. That was inevitable. It was better to be in a minority than it was to be wrong. The bankrupt's discharge was granted.