OUR R.M. COURT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 279, 26 February 1881, Page 2

OUR R.M. COURT.

To the Editor. Sir, —I beg to call your attention to a case of assault heard yesterday, Auberg v. Corsbie. I have read the report as it appears in your issue of same date, and can find no evidence that Corsbie was provoked, and, even if I did, is it any reason why he should take the law into his own hands and assault plaintiff as he did '? If so, it is not the law I have been accustomed to see administered.—l am, &c., Benefactor. [There was evidence of provocation though, as our correspondent might gather from the way “disgusting language” is spoken of in the report. The Magistrate might perhaps have given damages against Mr Corsbie for kicking a man who came to the verandah of his dwelling-house and used, in hearing of the family, language the reverse of polite and had such damages been imposed, Mr Wood would not have overstepped the law ; but we think, from our own impression of the case as we heard it, that justice did not miscarry, and had the most severe magistrate in jSew Zealand sat on the Bench, it is our opinion he would have given only nominal damages. As it was, a guinea costa were allowed, —and our correspondent will, perhaps, remember that the case was a civil and not a criminal action— Ed. A.G.]