JUSTICE AND SECOND-HAND DEALERS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19142, 27 October 1927, Page 11

JUSTICE AND SECOND-HAND DEALERS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sir,—Some days ago one of our Magistrates decided that firms supplying a certain imposter with merchandise which was eventually discovered at a second-hand shop could only have this merchandise returned by paying the second-hand dealer the price he paid for tho goods. In making this judgment he made it plain that the traders were to blame for trusting a man of this description. Now on the surface this seems good judgment, but when one realises that all of our.transactions, small and great, are taken, nioro or less on trust, it does not seem quite so reasonable. If tho secondhand dealer had received half of what he paid for the merchandise, and the people who supplied had lost the money they paid again for their own goods, it would have been on a fifty-fifty basis. It would seem now that the trader lost the money he had to find for the secondhand dealer, and the second-hand dealer lost nothing. Why should the second-hand dealer find himself in so favourable a position? It is quite clear that a second-hand dealer's training would make him look at every transaction with suspicious eyes. The writer, had he found himself in the position of being asked to buy back his own goods, would decidedly, on principle, have, said "No, thank, you." As a student .of commercial law, one would expect that in such cases as these the secondhand dealer's right to the article would immediately have been forfeited. — Yours,' etc., ' RETAIL TRADER.