178 / 338
and Mr. Justice Edmund Davies held that evidence
that a car had left the road and had mounted a grass
verge on its rearside and collided with a telegraph
^pole some three feet from the edge of the road
'disclosed a
prima facie
case of driving without due
care and attention.
The Court allowed this appeal by the prosecutor,
Mr. Watts, from a decision of Essex justices sitting
at Clacton, who dismissed an information preferred
against Mr. Carter that he had, on February 13,
1959, driven a motor vehicle on the Colchester Road
without due care and attention. The justices had
upheld a submission made on behalf of Mr. Carter
at the close of the prosecution's evidence that he
had no case to answer.
They had awarded Mr.
Carter seven guineas costs.
Mr. Michael Odgen appeared for Mr. Watts.
Mr. Carter did not appear and was not represented.
The Lord Chief Justice asked who had repre
sented Mr. Carter before the justices.
Mr. Ogden said that he had been represented by
a solicitor.
The Lord Chief Justice—He must have been
very persuasive.
The Lord Chief Justice said that this was a
perfectly plain instance where the prosecution had
adduced evidence to support a
prima facie
case of
driving without due care and attention.
It might
well be asked what Mr. Carter's car had been doing
off the road and in collision with a telegraph pole.
A bad point had been taken before the justices
and they had been persuaded to accept it. The matter
had now come before this court and additional
costs had been incurred. The case must be sent
back to the justices.
(Watts
v.
Carter,
The Times,
October 22, 1959.)
Public confidence in solicitors.
The Queen's Bench Division in England affirmed
an order of the Disciplinary Committee striking off
a solicitor who had
(inter alia)
committed breaches •
of the Solicitors' Accounts Regulations even al
though in the result no client had suffered a,ny loss.
There had at one stage been a deficiency in the
client's bank account which had been replaced. The
Court stated that this was no answer because public
confidence in the profession would be shaken by
such behaviour.
(In Re a Solicitor, 103 S.J. 875. 29 October, 1959).
This decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal
on January n, 1960.
Professional negligence. Principles applicable.
A medical practitioner, Dr. R, while visiting a
cottage hospital with no resident medical staff, was
told that a butcher had stabbed himself at work.
He went to the shop at once, transferred the man to
the cottage hospital, and there examined the wound,
which was in the abdomen, with great care and skill.
He diagnosed, wrongly, that the wound, though
cutting the deep fascia, had not penetrated to the
peritoneum, and sent the man home, but told him
emphatically to see his own doctor that evening and
tell him what had happened. When the man's own
doctor, Dr. M, saw him, symptoms of pain and
nausea had developed. The man reported that he
had been told by the hospital that the wound was
" superficial ". Dr. M, thinking that he had been to a
general hospital, accepted that report and treated
him for dyspepsia.
Five days later the man died
after operation, and a post-mortem showed a wound
in the small intestine.
The widow sued Dr. R,
alleging negligence on a number of grounds including
failure to communicate directly with Dr. M to report
what had happened and what had been found. The
trial judge dismissed all the charges of negligence
save that in respect of failure to communicate. On
that he awarded the widow agreed damages of
£9,050. Dr. R appealed.
Morris, L.J., for dismissing the appeal, said that
Dr. R had said that he could not have put into a
letter anything that the patient could not tell his own
doctor or which his own doctor could not infer
from Dr. R's actions.
Yet the melancholy fact
remained that Dr. M, who was in no way criticised,
was led to think that he need not concern himself
with the wound.
If he had received a communi
cation, he would have been made aware of facts
not within his knowledge. The question whether
the omission was negligent was one on which
expert technical guidance was not needed. Medical
witnesses had in this special case stated that if
similarly placed their conduct would have been no
different from that under review. But the duty still
remained with the court to decide whether such
conduct amounted in law to negligence, and his
Lordship could not on the evidence say that the
judge's
conclusion
that
negligence was here
established was faulty.
Romer, L.J., for allowing the appeal, said that all
that Dr. R did was consistent with and founded
on his diagnosis—which later proved wrong—that
the peritoneum had not been penetrated.
His
Lordship was not prepared to hold that any action
or conduct of Dr. R on that day, which two
distinguished witnesses had regarded
as being
in every
respect reasonable, constituted profes
sional negligence. He knew of no case in which
a medical man had been held guilty of negligence
when eminent members of his own profession
had expressed on oath their approval of what