Hearing Of Defence In Claim For £10,577 From Hospital Board

Wanganui Chronicle, 2 September 1950, Page 6

Hearing Of Defence In Claim For £10,577 From Hospital Board

NEW PLYMOUTH, Last Night (P.A.).-He had never performed the operation before and there was all the difference in the world between the practical dangers involved and the theoretical dangers, said Gordon Francis Rich, surgeon specialist, in the Supreme Court when the hearing of Stella Beatrice Hodgkiss’ claim against the Taranaki Hospital Board for £10,577 17s 3d damages arising out of alleged medical negligence was continued before Mr. Justice Cooke and a special jury. Rich, who performed the operation on Hodgkiss on September 21, 1949, during which a vital nerve was allegedly cut in mistake for an artery causing deformation and partial paralysis of her arm, was the first witness called for the defence and was in the box for two and a-half hours. He claimed he and Henry Barrett, _ senior surgeon at the hospital, took every precaution before resetting the piece of what was be-

lieved to be an artery. To counsel for plaintiff, he admitted that most of the tests he made were on the assumption that the structure they were testing was an occluded artery and were not designed to show whether it was an artery or a nerve. He did not think the damage was avoidable in the operation because of the previous condition of plaintiff’s arm. If damage was avoidable it was not within the scope of his skill. He admitted that he never made a test of pinching the structure for nerve reaction nor was a watch kept for such reaction during the operation. It was not a good principle to pinch a nerve, he said, but he admitted that it was better than cutting it. out. Evidence for the defence was concluded today. Other witnesses included Henry Campbell Barrett, senior surgeon at the New Plymouth Hospital, and Philip Patrick Lynch, pathologist, Wellington. The case was adjourned until Monday.