POSSESSION OF HOUSE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 44, 15 February 1946, Page 5

POSSESSION OF HOUSE

FARMER’S PLAINT FAILS

NUISANCE GROUNDS INSUFFI* CIENT

An interesting case illustrating the limited powers of a landlord to disposses tenants was heard before Mr E. L. Walton S.JM. in the Whakatane Magistrate’s Court last Tuesday, when Clarence Roy Dally,' a young rehabilitated farmer of Edgecumbe (Mr L. Buddie) claimed pos-J session of a house on his own property from Raymond Percival Shaw (Mr B. S. Barry) who had occupied it continuously for some years and was actually installed at the time of the transfer to the plaintiff. Plaintiff claimed hardship in that he needed the house urgently in order to instal a married man to assist him with the farming of his 85 acres and his herd of. 70 milking cows. His health, he stated had suffered •since his discharge from the Air Force, when he w r as classified Grade 4. On the grounds of nuisance and annoyance on the part of the defendant and his family, plaintiff related several instances of deliberate worrying of his milking herd by defendant’s wife and son, both of whom he alleged had. thrown clods at the cows and disturbed them. When he. remonstrated defendant’s wife had become abusive and used bad language to him and liis hoy assistant. He had thereupon taken legal proceedings to have them ejected and served a notice, to quit last November.

The defence was that clods had only been thrown at the cows in order to stop them eating the hedge around defendant’s house, or breaking into the garden. The use of abusive language was denied, and it was claimed that it was utterly impossible to find alternative accommodation elsewhere at Edgecumbe where defendant worked in the dairy factory. Plaintiff it was alleged had assumed a dictatorial attitude and had charged for milk which the defendant had been in the habit of receiving for nothing from tlic previous owner.

Evidence by Gilbert Jeffries farm hand employed by plaintiff was also heard.

Mr Barry contended that the evidence was not sufficient to enforce a court order depriving defendant and his family of the only home they had. Annoyance had not been proved to the extent contemplated by the Act of eviction. The Magistrate agreed with counsel and whilst admitting that the words allegedly used by plaintiff’s wife were particularly annoying suggested that this could be remedied by binding her over to keep the peace in future. This was the remedy he saw without going to the extreme of turning defendant out on to the road.

Plaintiff was non-suited according-