A judge has thrown out a bid by a male auxiliary nurse to win a damages pay-out from a hospital after he slipped on a flower.

However, Lord Eassie said he would have awarded Mr Allan Burke more than #203,000 if he had succeeded in establishing that Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was at fault for his fall.

He rejected claims that Mr Burke was a ''malingerer'' and accepted medical opinion for the accident victim that he was suffering from ''abnormal pain disorder''.

Mr Burke, 29, had been taken on as staff at the hospital just three weeks before he suffered a fall in September 1994. He was taking medicine back to the pharmacy from the geriatric ward, where he was employed, when he slipped as he was about to go downstairs and fell, hitting his head and sustaining pain in his back. It was discovered that he had slipped on the flowering head of a lily.

Mr Burke, of Spalding Crescent, Dalkeith, in Midlothian, said he has never recovered from the accident and continues to suffer pain. He was retired on medical grounds in 1995.

He sued the infirmary NHS trust claiming that the lily which he slipped on came from a burst rubbish bag. Mr Burke told the Court of Session that rubbish bags placed on the landing outside the ward were not always intact.

Hospital trolleys sometimes ripped them and down-an-outs occasionally opened them to forage for left-over food, he said.

But the charge nurse on the ward said she had never seen vagrants going through the bags, nor had she seen the rubbish from them spilled out on to the floor.

Lord Eassie said that it could not be assumed that the lily came from a rubbish bag, and it was possible that it had fallen from a bouquet of flowers being taken to a patient.

He said: ''On the basis of the evidence, I regard the accident as a very regrettable misfortune for which blame cannot be ascribed to either party.''

No-one had been able to tell Mr Burke exactly what was wrong with him, but he knew that he was in pain and definitely wanted to get better and to get back to work.

Orthopaedic surgeon Professor Gordon Waddell said that he had no doubt that Mr Burke was suffering pain which was genuine to him.

The judge said: ''I conclude that Mr Burke continues to suffer from the bundle of psychological and psychiatric problems known as chronic pain disorder or abnormal pain disorder. As a result, in practical terms he suffers significant disabilities.''

He added that if he found the hospital liable for the accident, he would have awarded Mr Burke a total of #203,550.