LOCKWOOD V. RAMSAY

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

LOCKWOOD - v. ce RAMSAY —

ORICA A

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at__Rekiay. SYDNEY on_.Friday.,.28th. May .1965..........

'A.C. Brooks, Government Printer, Melbourne ©.7839/60

LOCKWOOD

ve

BAMSAY

ORDER

Appeal dismissed with costs.

LockWoop ww

RAMSAY

JUDGMENT BARWICK C.J.

LOCKWOOD

The appellant was formerly a male nurse in the employ of the Department of Public Health of the Government of New South Wales. He had been so employed for a considerable number of years, and, by the time of the events which formed the occasion of the present action, had become a senior male nurse at the Reception House, Darlinghurst. He had been working as such since 1946; his duties, whether on day shift or night shift, included the pacifying of those patients who became violent.

The evidence given at the trial of this action,

if accepted, would support the following account of the facts

relevant to this appeal. The patients at the Reception House were in

various states of mental ill health, some indeed, recovering.

It would seem that a particular record of each patient was kept and that, in this record, tendencies to violence or actual outbreaks of violence were duly noted. When a patient became violent, the instructions to the male nurse were that the patient should be subdued without unnecessary delay so as to prevent him doing any damage to himself. The procedure to pacify a patient in an outbreak of violence was, first of all, to endeavour to persuade him by words into a quiet state of mind, but, if this did not succeed, and the state of his violence warranted it, to place him in a camisole or strait-jacket. This device, of which a sample was not actually received into evidence, though apparently one was shown to the jury, was described in the evidence as being a canvas garment in which the sleeves are stitched to the front so that, once the arms