Ramsay v Watson [1961] HCA 65

High Court of Australia Dixon C.J. McTiernan, Kitto, Taylor and Windeyer JJ. Ramsay v Watson [1961] HCA 65

ORDER Appeal dismissed with costs.

Cur. adv. vult.

The Court delivered the following written judgment:—

Oct. 26 Dixon C.J., McTiernan, Kitto, Taylor and Windeyer JJ.

In 1955 the respondent was retired from the service of the Government of New South Wales because of ill-health. He was then aged fifty-five. He had been for thirty-five years employed in the monotype section of the Government Printing Office. He brought an action against the appellant (who had been appointed, pursuant to the Claims against the Government and Crown Suits Act, 1912 N.S.W., the nominal defendant to represent the Government), because, as he alleged, his illness and disability were caused by lead poisoning contracted while he was working in the Printing Office; and this, he claimed, had occurred because his employer had negligently failed to protect him against injury by inhaling lead particles and lead oxide fumes. The jury, after a trial that lasted many days, found for the plaintiff and awarded £16,500 as damages. The Full Court of the Supreme Court refused to disturb the verdict. An appeal from that decision is now brought to this Court. The appellant makes no complaint against the summing-up of the learned trial judge, which was most careful and comprehensive; but he contends that his Honour should not have left the case to the jury, but should have directed a verdict for the defendant. Alternatively, he says that the jury's verdict should be set aside on the ground that an overwhelming weight of evidence was against it. Thirdly, he says that certain evidence was wrongly excluded. And fourthly, he complains that the damages were excessive.

The contention that there was no evidence, or no sufficient evidence, to support a verdict for the plaintiff was argued at length, but it can be disposed of briefly. The only possible conclusion from the mass of evidence is that there was material on which the jury might find as they did; and that their verdict was not obviously unreasonable or perverse. The salient facts are that in 1946 the respondent had been found by his own physician to have high blood pressure. In 1957, that is after he had been retired, he consulted a specialist experienced in industrial diseases. He diagnosed his illness as Bright's disease and suspected that the cause was lead intoxication. He therefore arranged for certain tests to be taken. The tests, confirmed later by treatment with calcium disodium versenate, revealed that the respondent had absorbed a considerable quantity of lead, enough it was said to be toxic. The doctor who had diagnosed the condition as Bright's disease stated quite firmly that he considered it more probable than not that the respondent's illness was due to lead poisoning. The medical witnesses called for the defence took a different view. In the result there was at the trial a conflict of medical opinion; first, as to whether the plaintiff really had any kidney disorder; secondly, whether, if so, it was caused by his absorption of lead or, as the contrary opinion had it, was a consequence of essential hypertension. It was certainly open to the jury to find that the result of some of the tests for albumen indicated that the plaintiff's kidneys were affected. It was argued, however, that they could not properly accept the opinion that lead intoxication rather than essential hypertension was more probably the cause. This, it was said, was to infer a causal relationship from nothing more than a temporal sequence or a coincidence. The argument ran as follows: Apart from Bright's disease and its accompanying effects there was an absence of the symptoms usually associated with lead poisoning: Bright's disease can be caused by other things than lead poisoning: it is possible that it was the result of essential hypertension unconnected with the absorption of lead. But the question was properly submitted to the jury. The case was not one in which of two possible factors one could be positively excluded; nor was it a case in which of several possible causes no one could be regarded as more probable than another. Moreover, hypertension and Bright's disease could, it seems, be together the complex and interacting consequences of lead intoxication. The jury were entitled in considering this aspect to give weight to the opinion of an experienced physician skilled in the relevant branch of medicine who had examined the patient. He gave his opinion as his inference of probability rather than as a logically established certainty. But to argue in the circumstances that it offended against the rules of logic is to mistake the nature of rational inference and of intellectual persuasion as to probability in the attribution of events to causes. That some medical witness should go into the box and say only that in his opinion something is more probable than not does not conclude the case. A qualified medical practitioner may, as an expert, express his opinion as to the nature and cause, or probable cause, of an ailment. But it is for the jury to weigh and determine the probabilities. In doing so they may be assisted by the medical evidence. But they are not simply to transfer their task to the witnesses. They must ask themselves "Are we on the whole of the evidence satisfied on a balance of probabilities of the fact?". In this case his Honour in his summing-up instructed the jury that this was their task; and no ground is shown for impugning their conclusion.