ORDER REFUSED

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 15

ORDER REFUSED

WANGANUI ESTATE

SALE BELOW MINIMUM PRICE

The trustees o£ the estate of the late I 1 Alexander Uatrick, of Wanganui, recently sought tho approval of the Supreme Court to a proposed sale by them of a warehouse site- in AVanganui which, with a quarter-aero section adjoining, the testator had directed should not bo sold for less than £30,000. The offer made to the trustees was £6000. Reserved judgment in the case was delivered to-day by his Honour the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers). The- order asked for wont a great deal further than what was done by the Court in any of the reported cases, said his Honour. Mr. Spratt (for the trustees) referred to a Scottish ease where an order was mad© contrary to the directions contained in the trust instrument, but the order was made by virtue of a section of a statute which made it competent to the Court, on the petition of the trustees under any trust, to 'grant authority to the trustees to do any of the acts mentioned in the section of tho Act relating to general powers of trustees, notwithstanding that such act was at variance with the terms or purposes of the trust, on being satisfied that such act was in all the circumstances expedient for the execution of the trust. There ,was no such statutory provision in New Zealand. ■ ■ ! . Mr. Spratt had also ■ referred to a recent imreported case in Wellington where- Mr. Justice Ostler made an order authorising trustees to sell land which the testator had directed should not bo sold. His Honour said ho understood from tho learned Judge, however, that the land in that 'case' was rural land which was deteriorating through the growth of noxious weeds and otherwise, and which there was a probability of the mortgagee selling under his power of sale. . . The order that the learned Judgo made was regarded by him as really of the nature of a salvage order. Similar conditions did not exist iV the present case. True, conditions were said to have changed very much in Wanganui from what they were when the testator made his will, but they had not, to his mind, so changed as to justify the Court in authorising the trustees to sell the, property at a price of very little over; one-fourth the amount (if the value of the adjoining land were taken into account) below which the testator ■ ex-i pressly prohibited a sale. ' ' His Honour emphasised that the; Court should be extremely careful before authorising a. sale of land con-:' trary to the, express direction of the-: testator. If authority for a sale was to1 be obtained in a case like the present, his Honour thought that the proper method of obtaining such authority was by a Private Estate Bill. At off. events, he was not prepared' to niakfj the order asked for. The trustees hacj, however, acted quite properly in coming to the Court. - Mr. F. C. Spratt; appeared for tbie trustees, and Mr. H. F. Yon Haast for the. testator 's infant grandchildren. !