A WOMAN and her husband have been cleared of a New Year's Eve party attack in which she was alleged to have gouged a man's eye.

The judge Recorder Brian Cox QC stopped the trial on its second day when Anne-Marie Stobbs,36, and her husband Steven,37, claimed they acted in self-defence at a neighbours' party in Yarm which they attended with their children.

Prosecutor Anthony Dunne said that Steven Stobbs got into a scuffle with the host Martin Morrison who told him to leave.

When he was still there half-an-hour later another guest Ted Moir, 56, asked him to go and Mr Moir was attacked by both the Stobbs.

Mr Moir told Teesside Crown Court that Mrs Stobbs ran at him swearing and shouting outside the house knocking him to the ground, and then she began gouging his left eye with her thumb or a finger. He alleged that Mr Stobbs punched him in the head about ten times as the couple pinned both his arms until they were dragged off by other guests.

Mr Moir told the jury: "I thought I had lost an eye for a moment.

"I could not see out of my left eye and there was blood everywhere. I was in shock and a couple of friends took me home.

"My wife took one look at me and threw up. I just washed myself up and sat out the back and had a couple of beers."

Mr Moir who said that he had drunk eight pints of beer said that the next day he was very sore and he went to his doctor who referred him to James Cook University College Hospital, Middlesbrough.

Cross-examined by defence lawyers he denied that he was the aggressor that night and that the Stobbs acted in self-defence.

He said: "She was trying to gouge my left eye out and he was punching me about the head.

"He punched me possibly about ten times about the head. I was not aggressive at all, and if they want to make any counter-claim that's up to them."

The couple of Rudby Close, Yarm, were both found not guilty of actual bodily harm assault.