BONUS PAYMENT.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20108, 11 December 1930, Page 5

BONUS PAYMENT.

factory and supplier. UNSUCCESSFUL APPEAL. (press association tslegsam.) WELLINGTON, December 10. The Appeal Court delivered judgment to-day in the case of the Elthaiu Dairy Company versus Johnson, which was heard on March 28tli. Delivery of this judgment was delayed, pending a decision of case which, it was thought, would affect judgn/ent in this matter. The juilf/ment of the Chief Justice, Sir Michai/l Myers, Mr Justice Blair, and Mr Justice Kennedy, in holding that the appeal should be dismissed, was delivered by Sir Michael Myers. In the course of the judgment his Honour said: "In the present case the contract between respondent as supplier and tho company is constituted by the delivery and acceptance of produce. The terms on which the produce was delivered by the supplier and accepted by the company, as at the date when such supply and acceptance commenced, aro to be_ found in the articles of 1910. ■The parties must be assumed to have agreed that those wore* the terms of the contract. In 1917 the company altered its articles by special resolution, and radically altered the terms dealing with the supply if butterfat and milk. The alterations did not affect the respondent, so long as he supplied all his milk and butterfat, which he did until 1924. Consequently he received payment in the same way as under the articles that existed prior to 1917. He would, therefore, have no knowledge or notice merely from tho course of the business between parties that any alteration had been made in regard to payment for milk and butterfat supplied by him to tho company. If he had notice or knowledge of the alteration and had continued to supply, he would have been deemed bound by the alteration in the articles. Not Applicable. "The Judge in tho Court below found as a fact that respondent had no such notice or knowledge, and tho company, therefore, sought to rely upon the doctrine of constructive notice. In our opinion, that doctrine has no application to a case like the present. It was not until the 1924-25 season when, for a poriod of months, respondent had supplied only portion of his milk and butterfat that the company sought to pay him on a basis different from that which had previously been acted upon, and until then, as tho Judge in tho Supreme Court found, respondent had no notice of tho alterations made in 1917. The company has only itself to blamo for the position in which it now finds itself in its relations with respondent. Its proper course, when the articles were altered in 1917, was to give every supplier express notice of the alteration. Respondent, had he received such notice, would then have had the option either of discontinuing his supply to the company and making arlangoments elsewhere, or continuing on altered terms. This opportunity was not given him. J ' Judgments to the same effect were also written by Justices Herdman and Smith. The appeal was accordingly dismissed.