THE GREATER UNION ORGANISATION PTY LTD v CALIN [1989] NSWCA 92

THE GREATER UNION ORGANISATION PTY LTD v CALIN SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

SAMUELS JA 10 April 1989

[1989] NSWCA 92

Samuels JA This is an application for the provision of security for costs, themotion being brought by the respondent to the appeal who was the successful defendant at the trial which took place before Finlay J and a jury over seven or eight days in September last year. So far as I am aware, because there has been no time to explore the facts in great detail, nor indeed is it appropriate to do so, the plaintiff's case in negligence against the defendant was that on entering one of the defendant's cinemas she slipped and sustained some injury. In alleged consequence of the injury she developed the most bizarre conditions, which included what seems to have been a substantial reversion to childhood and a divorce from the reality of the world and the circumstances surrounding her. As a result she was unable to give evidence at the trial. The evidence of the occurrence was provided only by her husband and her son.

There was, it is clear, an extreme conflict of medical opinion. So far as the plaintiff was concerned it was a matter of great difficulty for the consultant psychiatrist and the consultant neurologist to determine into which of their special fields her condition fell. Neither of them was of the opinion that she was other than genuine, a view which they appear to have expressed by at least two nurses who had taken care of the plaintiff for some extended period.

On the other hand medical evidence was called by the defendant indicating that there was no physiological, pathological or mental condition known to medicine which could explain the signs which the plaintiff demonstrated.

The case was fought largely on the footing that the plaintiff was a fraud, and that it was to be inferred from the medical conflict and the fact that she was a malingerer that her account of the accident and its consequences was a fabrication.