MOTOR ACCIDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1939, Page 7

MOTOR ACCIDENT

ALLEGED FAILURE TO STOP. SWAIN FOUND NOT GUILTY. (By Telegraph—Press _ Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. ■ An accident on the Wellington-Mas-terton main highway which involved a taxi and another car led to the appearance in the Supreme Court. Wellington, of Herbert Swain, taxi-driver, aged 64, Carterton. who pleaded not guilty to a charge of failing to. stop after an accident and ascertain if any person was injured. Mr C. C. Marsack of Masterton. appeared for accused. The Crown Prosecutor. Mr W. H. Cunningham, said that on the afternoon on July 24 Mrs Mavis McPhee was driving her car from Masterton toward Greytown. As she neared a bend she saw a car approaching with a lorry in tow. It was alleged that another car. driven by accused, came out from i behind the lorry and collided with the side of Mrs McPhee’s car. It crumpled the back and right-hand front mudguards and knocked off a door handle. A,front mudguard of the car driven by the accused was also damaged. Mr Cunningham added that accused ■ reported the accident to the police next | morning, and in a statement said he [ had just passed the lorry when he felt ’ a bump. Accused asked a passenger if the other car had stopped and the pas- ; senger answered in the negative. "I thought everything was all right and ; w.ent on to Masterton." accused said j in his statement. | Accused, in the witness box. said his | passenger, who knelt up on the back j seat and looked back, said the other car had not stopped. Accused said he slowed his car when he felt a bump. His Honour (Mr Justice Blair), in summing-up. said that curiously enough both drivers had thought it a .case where they should stop. If the jury accepted the evidence of the accused and the passenger that the passenger looked back and could not see the other car. and that the accused would have stopped had the car been visible, he thought a verdict of not i guilty should be returned. The jury retired at 11.33 a.m. and returned at 12.5 with a verdict of not guilty.