A COINCIDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 14 August 1930, Page 13

A COINCIDENCE

ASSESSMENT OF DAMAGES. The jury whose duty it was in the Supreme Court at Wellington on Monday to assess the damages they thought William MacGlashan Smith, waterside worker, and his wife, Charlotte Smith, ere entitled to from Gilbert Jepson, motor mechanic, were given the satisfaction of knowing that their award of £5OO was precisely the same amount his Honour Mr. Justice Ostler (who presided at the hearing) would have awarded had it been his duty to decide.

Smith and his wife claimed £lll2 4s Gd damages, as a result of an accident in which Mrs. Smith was run down and seriously injured by a motorcycle and sidecar in charge of Jepson at Island Bay in November last. It -was mentioned during the hearing of the case that the defendant had offered £4OO as damages, but the plaintiffs had not accepted the amount. After a retirement of nearly two and a-half hours, the jury awarded the plaintiffs £2OO special damages and £3OO general damages, and his Honour entered judgment for those sums. His Honour said it might be of interest to the jury to know that had he had to decide the case he would have decided it in exectly the same way as the jury, and proportioned the damages in precisely the same way as the jury had done. It was a coincidence.