A DIABETIC had to have his right leg amputated after a vicious attack by a Huddersfield man.

John Smith, 61, had emergency surgery after he was attacked by his partner's ex-husband, a court heard.

Mr Smith, of Abbeymead, Gloucester, suffered a broken ankle in the assault by Adrian Hirst.

Complications led to the leg being amputated, Gloucester Crown Court was told.

Mr Smith is now considering legal action against Hirst and the NHS hospital which treated him.

Hirst, 45, a freelance will writer, of Parkwood Close, Shelley, admitted causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Smith, a mortgage and financial adviser, on October 22, 2005.

Hirst wept with relief as Judge Jamie Tabor decided it was not necessary to jail him.

Instead, the judge gave Hirst a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. He also ordered him to pay Mr Smith £2,000 compensation and £500 court costs.

The judge said he was not sentencing Hirst - who had no previous criminal record - on the basis that he was responsible for the leg amputation, only for the fracture he caused.

"I want to make it plain that I am not sentencing you for what injuries followed the break," he said. "It is not clear enough that they are a direct consequence."

After the case Mr Smith said: "Given what the Home Office told judges last week about the prisons being full I'm not surprised he escaped going to jail. I have no wish to see anyone go to prison, but I would not have lost any sleep if he had been jailed.

"However, he is the father of my partner's two children, who live with me, and it would have been even worse for them if he had been sent to prison.

"The compensation twill not help a lot. It's about three weeks wages, when I have lost a year of my life."

Prosecutor Giles Nelson said the attack happened when Hirst drove from Huddersfield to visit his children, only to be told he would not be able to see them.

Feeling frustrated and disappointed he rugby-tackled Mr Smith, the new partner of his ex-wife Judith, 38.

Defence barrister Mark Eldridge said: "His marriage to Judith endured for about seven years. But in November, 2000, she met Mr Smith. Mrs Hirst moved in with Mr Smith, taking the children with her.

"Mr Hirst is devoted to his children and they enjoyed contact with him on a regular basis," said Mr Eldridge.

"There was a growing sense of difficulty in making arrangements between the adults. A contact dispute emerged and there were a number of court appearances about access, drawn out over months and months.

"Bitterness developed on both sides and there was a falling-off in co-operation. So it was against that background that all of a sudden a planned visit was called off.

"The defendant, in his frustration, arrived in this area to a note. He had been fully expecting to see the children.

"It was most fraught. The defendant felt excluded and ostracised from his own family."

Mr Eldridge added: "No-one has been more horrified than the defendant. One can easily imagine his feelings when he learned that the leg had to be in part amputated."

Mr Eldridge said it was clear from medical reports that there was not a definite link between the original injury and the need for amputation.

Sentencing Hirst, the judge said he accepted that at the time of the incident emotions were running high and Hirst was feeling fraught.

"You were getting more and more angry with the situation, so that in the end you confronted the victim in a way which, as far as I can judge, was wholly out of character."

Mr Smith said that when the family were back home that evening when Mrs Hirst saw her ex-husband kicking their car.

"I told her to stay inside with the door locked and I went out the back way. I saw him and asked if he had kicked the car and he said he had. Then he just ran at me.

"I stepped back to brace myself and over I went as he ran into me. The next thing I knew he was trying to strangle me.

"Judith came out to try to pull him off me. He stepped back, but then looked at me and delivered two hard kicks at my ribs.

"The court was told that the broken ankle itself was not necessarily the cause of my leg being amputated," he said.

"But if someone breaks your ankle and there are complications which lead to your leg being amputated it is that person's responsibility."