TAUMARUNUI BY-ELECTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2704, 25 February 1916, Page 6

TAUMARUNUI BY-ELECTION

INTERESTING LAW SDIT. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, February 24. An interesting law suit, arising out of tlte by-election which took place at Taumarunui some months ago, in which Messrs. Jennings and Wilson were candidates, is set down for hearing at the Hamilton sittings of the Supreme Court. The plaintiff is Frederick William Schramm, who is Returning Officer and Registrar of Electors for Tauinamirai, und the defendant is the Hon. Dr. M'Nab, now Minister of Justice.

At the time of the election Dr. M'Nah was the leading member of tho then Opposition Party, and plaintiff claims to recover from Dr. M'Nab the sum of £100U • damages for alleged slander.' He alleges that prior to the olection the defendant addressed a meeting of electors at Hangatiki, end that on that occasion ho said: "Mr. Jennings will be returned on Tuesday, unless it is otherwise arranged in the office of tho Returning Officer nt To Kuiti." Plaintiff claims that this language imputed that ho was capable of committing a very grave breach of his duty.

The defendant; in his filed statement of defence, denies that ho used the words attributed to him, and says the .wovds actually used-were: "If we lose, we have lost in the Registrar's office," and tne oOTitext in wnicli he used them was as follows. He was pointing out to the electors that, with one exception, there had never been a case in which an election had been upset when the unseated man had not been re-elected, that since the general election there had been considerable activity in the Registrar's office in the.way of receiving new applications for enrolment, and that in using the words 1 he was referring to this activity and not designing to impute impropriety to anyone. The interlocutory phase of the case came before Judge Cooper in Chambers to-day, when the plaintiff obtained leavo to administer interrogatories to tho defendant, with the view of elucidating the words ireed by the defendant on tho platform.