| material which could answer the relevant question differently to | The primary judge searched the evidencesin some detail for |
| the Tribunal. His Honour describedthe evidence as "very sparse" and it has not been sought to argue to the contrary on appeal. His Honour correctly stated that the question before him, as it is before this Full Court, was whether it was open to the Tribunal to find that the available material did not raise the reasonable hypothesis of connection. The appellant's submission to the Tribunal on this matter was that the deceased commenced to drink alcohol whilst on service due to the stress of service, and that this developed post war into a habit of drinking alcohol and eventually into a dependence upon alcohol leading to the condition which caused death. |
| As both the Tribunal and his Honour have recorded all the evidence on this question in detail, and there is no suggestion made of any inadequacies in their summaries, there is no point in our doing so again here. The Tribunal found that there was no such evidence and his Honour held that it was a conclusion entirely open on the material presented to the Tribunal. This is because there was no evidence at all that the deceased acquired a drinking habit or practice during his army service or that the drinking habit he acquired later was caused by the stress undoubtedly occasioned by his war service. |
| The appellant sought to found an argument on the statement by the Tribunal, previously noted, concerning the temporal connection. This paragraph must be read in the light of the preceding |
| findings of fact made. In that context it was not a finding that | |
| there was in fact a temporal connection between war service and his commencement of drinking. Indeed, the evidence would not have supported such a finding. The evidence only shows that when Mrs McMahon first met her husband in 1939, he was then only 17 years old and did not drink, and she believed that he drank, although not to the extent that indicated an alcohol problem, when they married in July 1948. |
| There was a period of some three years between 1939 and June 1942 during which Mr McMahon was in Sydney before joining the Army and a further two years, June 1946 to June 1948 between his discharge and the marriage, when there is no evidence that he was drinking at all. It is not even free from doubt that he was a drinker at the time of his marriage. In our opinion his Honour's conclusions were therefore manifestly correct. Assuming that this appeal raises a true question of law at all, about which we have some lingering doubt, we can find no fault at all in his Honour's resolution of it. The appeal must be dismissed with costs. |
| I certify that this and the three preceding pages are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment herein of the Court |
| Associate: | $~WKOO | Date: 15 MW& /99+ | |