Howes J:

The facts and arguments appear sufficiently from the judgement below.

In this suit the Plaintiff, as Administrator of the deceased woman Wong Lian, claims under the Civil Law Enactment No. 3 of 1937 for:

(1) Damages, for a cause of action which had vested in the woman while alive, and survived for the benefit of her estate, namely that she was deprived of her expectation of life.

(2) The sum of $70 said to have been expended by him as funeral expenses, in burying the deceased.

The Plaintiff also sues to recover damages for himself and his two infant sons (aged respectively four and two years) as dependents, under the Executors (Powers) and Fatal Accidents Enactment (Cap. 19).

Both claims are based on the negligence of the Defendant's driver, who, while driving his lorry at about 5.15 a.m. on the morning of the 6 May 1939 when it was still dark, ran into and killed the deceased, practically instantaneously.

The principal witness for the Plaintiff was Chan See, a woman mining cooly who was walking with the deceased (who was also a mining cooly) on a straight length of tarred road, in the direction of Telok Anson.

The road was 18' 6" wide, and on each side was a grass verge 10' 4" wide, behind which were some banana trees on both sides.

I accept Chan See's statement that both she and the deceased were walking on their left-hand side of the road. She said they were both walking on the grass verge, but this (since there were no marks of the lorry having gone on the grass) I do not accept.

According to this witness, the lorry "came to me suddenly," and collided with her, knocking her down; "the deceased also fell after being struck by the lorry."

This witness explained that she and the deceased had been walking on the left-hand side of the road, ever since they left their neighbouring houses that morning, and never had any occasion to, and did not cross the tarred road that morning. I accept this statement as true.

From the medical evidence, it is clear that the wheels of the lorry must have passed right over the deceased's pelvis, causing instantaneous death. The lorry was coming from the direction of Telok Anson, and was facing Chan See and the deceased.

Neither the Defendant nor his driver gave evidence. The Plaintiff's advocate had put in evidence the driver's and his passenger's statement made to the Police later on the day of the accident. Their statement was to the effect that at the point where the accident took place is a path, leading to the bananas and to the squatters' houses behind, and according to the driver, when the lorry reached this point he saw "three Chinese woman darting across the road towards my right-hand side of the road, This happened so suddenly that to avoid them I had to swerve to my right, and though I turned the steering of the lorry a good deal, I failed to avoid the three women completely. I think I knocked down the first of the three women and also knocked slightly the second of the three.

The Defendant's advocate relied on this statement to prove that the driver was not negligent; and further in his statement of defence pleaded that the deceased or some third person unknown was guilty of contributory negligence, and that the accident was inevitable.

Since this story is in direct contradiction of Chan See's evidence that she and the deceased never crossed the road, and owing to neither the driver nor the passenger having given evidence, so that I could test the veracity of their statements, I am unable to accept their version of what took place. It seems to me highly improbable that three women would be "darting across the road at that time of morning. Even if they did so, there was the 10' 4" grass verge which they had to cross before reaching the tarred road; and if the driver had seen paying attention to his driving he would have seen them in time to stop his lorry, or to have applied his brakes. There was no evidence of any braketracks on the surface of the road.