WORKSHOPS MISHAP

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 11

WORKSHOPS MISHAP

LABOURER INJURED

CLAIM FOR £2000

The hearing of evidence on the petition of right brought by Horace John Moon against the Crown was completed in the Supreme Court yesterday afternon before Mr. Justice Ostler and a jury. Moon claimed £2000-in respect of injuries received at the Railway Workshops at Lower Hutt, where he was employed by A. and T. Burt, Ltd., on a contract for installing heaters. A stack of • heaters alongside a railway, lino was struck by a stanchion on a truck and the heaters fell, one man being killed and three injured.

Mr. P. J. O'Regan appeared for the suppliant, and Mr. P. S. K. MaeasWey, with him Mr. C. Evans-Scott, for 'the Crown.

When the Court resumed after the luncheon adjournment, Mr. Maeassey moved for a non-suit on the ground that the evidence given by the suppliant and his witnesses had not shown negligence on the part of the Railway Department's servants. • .".."■.

His Honour reserved the point. ' ■]■'■. Arthur Herbert Hesketh, a railway labourer, said that the stanchions on the truck were not shifted in any way duriilg loading operations before the accident^ The stanchions were in the same position on the trip on which the mishap occurred as during the previous trip. To his Honour, witness said that the stanchions had not been taken out to load the truck. Clarence Hector Walls, another workshop employee, said that he saw a man push some of the stanchions as the truck went by, presumably to prevent their striking the heaters. ; The officer in .charge of the workshops, Alfred Edwin Phillips Wallworth, said he considered the heaters were not sa|ely stacked since they were too close to the line. If a stanchion were back to front and loose in its socket, a man pushing it would cause it to spring back. A stanchion put in the wrong way would come out more at the top than at the, bottom. The stanchion which caused the damage had been put in the wrong way. Under ordinary circumstances, there was sufficient clearance for one wrongly placed stanchion. > _ ' The workshops foreman; William Frederick George Pullen, said that there was no regulation regarding the clearance to be allowed between objects near the line and' the trucks. However, railway employees all knew what was a safe margin. After counsel had addressd the jury, the Court adjourned until to-day.