Supreme Court PETITION FAILS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31080, 8 June 1966, Page 8

Supreme Court PETITION FAILS

Allegation Not Upheld Saying that he believed the evidence of a respondent and co-respondent who had denied an allegation of adultery, Mr Justice Wilson, in the Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a petition for divorce brought by Elizabeth Wybrow, a shopkeeper, against her husband, Arthur Alfred Vernon Wybrow, a timber worker. Mrs Wybrow (Mr P. T. Mahon) alleged that her husband had committed adultery with Pauline Mona Redmond, a department-store cashier, during a week-end stay at the Railway Hotel, Hokitika, on March 4-6. Wybrow and Mrs Redmond, represented by Mr G. R. Lascelles, with him Mr D. M. Palmer, denied the allegation of adultery, and said that they had only both stayed in Hokitika when Mts Redmond found she could not get accommodation at the Taramakau Hotel, where she had been driven by Wybrow, and where she intended staying with friends. His Honour said that the whole question was solely one of credibility, as to whether the respondent and co-res-pondent had been seen, in night attire, going in and coming out of the latter’s bedroom at the Hokitika hotel by an investigator and his assistant.

But the thorough crossexamination of both respondent and co-respbndent by a very able counsel had reinforced his first impression that they were telling the truth, said his Honour, and such cross-examination was a good test of an honest witness.

Of the evidence given for the petitioner by Shirley William Cunningham, an investigator, his Honour said he had always found him a reliable witness in divorce suits. On this occasion, while accepting that Cunningham had seen the respondent and co-respondent in the hotel corridor, his Honour thought that he had made a mistaken assumption that they had entered, and emerged, from the latter’s bedroom.

Hungry Birds.— White cockatoos, “in plague proportions,” are ravaging newlysown oat crops in Western Victoria. The birds are believed to be migrating from New South Wales because of the drought there.—Sydney, June 7.