WILLIAM BROWN’S CASE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 855, 30 January 1883, Page 2

WILLIAM BROWN’S CASE.

To thb Editor. Sir, —One part of your leading article of yesterday appears to have been writteh under a misapprehension. It is not the duty of any official of the District Court to see that declarations of insolvency .filed with him are properly prepared and, attested. Save in exceptional, cases, the officers of Law Courts are nut responsible for the validity of documents filed in their, offices; and if you are going to make them so, you ought also, in common fairness, to raise' their “screws ” to two or threej thousand pounds a year at the least, in' •order to cover the risk of the Innumerable; actions for damages to which they would] necessarily be exposed. As in other legal | proceedings, - the persons who commence i and carry on bankruptcy proceedings do] so on their own responsibility, and if they 1 go astray they must pay the; piper. I; possess no personal knowledge of the sub-, j act-matter of your article, but I under-1 stand that the- entanglement into which] things have got is owing to the fact that; Mr Brown, instead of employing a solid-; .tor to prepare his bankruptcy papers for! him, sought the assistance of a commission; agent, who, if the statements made in your article be well founded, has not only, succeeded in getting Mr Brown’s affairs into an extraordinary mess, but likewise in putting Mr Brown’s creditors to much needless trouble and expense, while he has, of course, laid himself (the commission agent) open to a criminal prosecution for transacting legal business without being qualified to do so. I agree with you that the case is one which demands enquiry, so that the saddle may be put upon the right horse, and the real offender brought to punishmeut.—l am, etc., ; January 30th. " Lex.