£132 FOR MOTORIST

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 617, 20 March 1929, Page 6

£132 FOR MOTORIST

CITY COUNCIL PAYS DAMAGES

LEFT ROAD UNSAFE

“The concreting was an interference with the normal condition of the road, conducing ultimately to the injury suffered by plaintiff and the defendant must be held liable.”

Concluding thus, Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., -gave a decision in favour of P. J. Magee, who proceeded against the Auckland City Council on account of an accident he had suffered when his car had capsized on the Great North Road after one wheel had run off the concrete strip which was proved to be several inches above the rest of the road. When the action was heard recently, Mr. Snedden for plaintiff maintained that the accident was due to the negligence of the council as, when carrying out the work of concreting the road it did not leave it safe for traffic. The magistrate in his judgment said that although # a shoulder of handpacked rubble had been put down when the work was done 14 months before the accident, the foreman had admitted that he had found it crushed down probably through the action of heavy traffic. “This evidence seems to me conclusive that the construction of the shoulder, as described, did not meet the danger created by the defendant's work in concreting the road, and did not make it safe for traffic,” added Mr. Cutten. Judgment was entered for plaintiff for £132 16s 4d.