COUNTESS'S CLAIM TO WEALTH.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1614, 4 December 1912, Page 5

COUNTESS'S CLAIM TO WEALTH.

STORY OF MURDER AND A LIFE ' ' SENTENCE. DIPLOMAT AND FORTUNE IN A LONDON BANK. A remarkable story was told in the Chancery Court, London, on October 18, when counsel applied to Mr. Justice live oil behalf of Count Johann de Lizardi, formerly Mexican .Minister in Paris, who is defendant to an action brought by a Russian countess named O'Brien de Lacy, to discharge an injunction obtained by the Countess during tho long vacation restraining the Count and the Dresduer Bank from parting with a fund of Jill,ooo. A tangled web wa3 revealed in the statement in aide by Mr. P. O. Lawrence, ly.C., on behalf of the Count. The plaintilt in, the action, said counsel, was "in a way" the step-daughter of the defendant. Tho latter in 1906 married tho plaintiff's 'mother, whose marriage had been dissolved in 1892. The plaintiff herself had been married in Russia, and that marriage had also been dissolved and she had married again. The Countess's present husband, also a Russian, subject, was Count de Lacy. He had murdered her. brother, and at the trial he was convicted of murder _ and sentenced to penal servitude for life, a sentenco whicli he was now undergoing. It was during that trial that it first came to the knowledge of tho defendant that his wife had a daughter at all. His wife, incensed at the murder of her son by the Count do Lacy, thereupon determined, according to the defendant's story, to give lior property to tho defendant during her lifetime, so as not to let any part of it coino into tho possession of her daughter or her own former husband. That, said counsel, was the story that was not disclosed at the Court of Appeal when they granted the Countess an illjunction restraining the defendant from dealing with, the property in question. No communication between the defendant's wife and her daughter had taken place during the married life, and the defendant had never seen or communicated with tho plaintiifi The money in dispute in the case formed the proceeds of the sale of a house ' in Paris, which belonged to tho defendant's wife, and amounted to 295,000 francs, or about 411,000. That sum was dealt withby the defendant during tho lifetime of ■the wife ; in a manner which slowed (hat he had her consent to the absolute control. _ 1 Defendant's wife died in May, 1911, and the plaintiff then turned up and put an embargo oil the whole of her mother's estate in Paris and Russia. That was seized, and there was litigation about it. 11l England the defendant had a banking account at the Dresdner Bank, where lie lhad 42000 and investments and securities, and the plaintiff claimed a declaration that the money and securities at the bank belonged to her. The defendant, however, said his deceased wife had no property in England at all, and that tbis property was his. ; Mr. Clayton, K.C., for the plaintiff, said that with the exception of ono new fact alleged by the defendant, all the circumstances were before the Court of Appeal. Mr, Justice Evo remarked that the proceedings up to that point appeared to him to be extremely irregular in every way, and, after discussion, it was arranged that tlio njunction should bo limited to certain of the securities at the bank in London, the defendant undertaking to take out letters of administration in England in respect of his wife's estate. • The case then stood over for trial.