NSW: Sailor loses bid to sue over Voyager disaster

AAP General News (Australia)
12-15-2000
NSW: Sailor loses bid to sue over Voyager disaster

SYDNEY, Dec 15 AAP - A sailor who was ashore at the time of Australia's worst peacetime
naval disaster today lost his bid to sue the Commonwealth.

Theodore Douglas Landells had asked the New South Wales Supreme Court for an extension
of time to enable him to sue over the 1964 collision between the destroyer HMAS Voyager
and the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne off the state's south coast.

He claimed to have suffered a post traumatic stress disorder caused by his involvement
in events surrounding the sinking of HMAS Voyager after the collision.

But Master Bryan Malpass dismissed his claim, describing it as hopeless.

He said there was one startling difference between this case and many other claims
arising out of the tragedy in which 82 people died.

"The difference is that the plaintiff was on neither ship at the time of the collision," he said.

"Indeed, he was not on any ship.

"In fact, he was ashore at the time of the collision and had been involved in a motor
vehicle accident near Camden a short time before it took place."

Mr Landell's wife told him of the collision the next day.

Mr Landells, who had transferred from the Voyager to HMAS Vampire the year before the
collision, had claimed he developed an alcohol problem after the tragedy which continued
until 1986.

AAP mss/bd/jjs/cjh/bwl z

KEYWORD: LANDELLS

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