INJURED BY TRAM CONDUCTOR

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1928, Page 16

INJURED BY TRAM CONDUCTOR

PASSENGER AWARDED ESOO. TREATMENT NOT JUSTIFIED. Albert Robert James Bradford, » labourer, wa« awarded £5OO damage# against the Wellington City Council, from which he claimed £1164, on the ? round that hi* right arm had been roken when he was put off a tramcar by a conductor. Evidence w„ given that Bradford was ordered to leave the tram, but he refused and when he was lifted off the seat he clung to * rail, The conductor then repeatedly hit him on one wrist, to force hi® to release his grip. The allegation was made that, four months after the affair, Bradford’s leg had snapped, after a piece of bona had been taken from it to graft on the bone in his arm. Mr. J. O’Shea, city solicitor, announced that he wa» calling Dr. Cameron, a radiologist, to say that the leg was not broken. Ha doubted very much whether the arm was brokenMr. Juetice MacGregor: I have no doubt his arm was broken. Mr. O’Shea: His arm was not broken at the time of the accident. His Honor; I suppose he broke it afterwards with a hammer. Mr. O’Shea; He might have.

Dr. Cameron produced a recent X-ray plate of the plaintiff’s leg. It showed, he paid, that a slip of bone had been taken from the shin-bone; also that that area had healed up well. Apart fro® that, there was no abnormality in the leg. There was no evidence of the leg having been broken for many years past. His Honor, in awarding £5OO damage*; said the evidence was by no means sufficient to allow him to say there was justification for the conductor’s aetionIt was clear that the conductor had made a mistake, and the defendant would have to pay for it. If the plaintiff was as drunk as >ad been suggested, why did the conductor take his fare? It was quite clear from the evidence that he was not misbehaving himself.