YOUNG V. THE NARACOORTE DISTRICT HOSPITAL AND OTHERS

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT j Judgment delivered at........ S¥ANEY. aor 7 Hovsvom, Govt, Frints Neto, on... Tuesday,.16th December.19

YOUNG

NARACOORTE DISTRICT HOSPITAL INC. "AND OTHERS

ORDER

Appeal dismissed with costs.

YOUNG ve

THE NARACOORTE DISTRICT HOSPITAL "~"~END OTHERS" SS

SURSMENT DIXON C.J.

YOUNG ve

THE NARACOORTE DISTRICT HOSPITAL " AND"OTHERS

The appeal in this case depends upon a question of fact. The action from which it arises is that of an infant suing by his next friend to recover damages for personal injury suffered through negligent surgical treatment. The defendants are the Naracoorte District Hospital and three medical practitioners who while the child was in that hospital as a patient treated him or attended to him. He was admitted to the hospital suffering from a compound fracture of. the bones of the left forearm. In the action he complains that by reason of some want of care or skill on the part of one or other or all of the three medical practitioners who are defendants he sustained a Volkmann's ischaemic contracture of his left hand. The contracture involves an almost complete loss of the usefulness of his hand which has assumed a claw-like state with an inability by ordinary control to straighten the fingers or grip with then. Such a condition arises from an interruption of the arterial blood supply to the belly of the muscles concerned, in this case of the forearm; the tissue dies; it becomes fibrous and contracts and with this there may be associated a degeneration of the nerve trunks and a nerve paralysis.

The action was tried by Reed J. who found for the defendants.

Naracoorte is a town in the south-east of South Australia possessing a hospital incorporated under s. 43 of the Hospitals Act 1934-1952 (S.A.) and supported, in part at all events, by contributions from the municipality under Part IV of that Act. It is the defendant hospital. There is a