SUPREME COURT.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2521, 16 March 1871, Page 2

SUPREME COURT.

CIVIL SITTINGS,

This Day

(Before Mr Justice Chapman.) SLANDKR. William Pollock v. James Paterson.— Claim for LSOO damages for slander. Mr Barton, with whom was Mr M‘Keay, foi the plaintiff, and Mr Macassey, instructed by Mr Sievwright, for the defendant. The plaintiff and defendant are farmers and neighbours residing at Otepopo, and for a time were on terms of intimacy. For some reason plaintiff stopped the visits of defendant and a Mrs Lochhead who was staying with him to his wife and daughters, and this action on his part caused unpleasantness between them which, it appears, culminated in a complete estrangement of the families. On the dull of last, plaintiff was at the Eoyal Hotel, Otepopo, iu company with two men named Young and Henry, when the defendant came in and called him “ad—d rogue.” On being remonstrated with he repeated the epithet, adding that plaintiff had stolen 12 or 13 bags of oats from his (defendant’s) paddock, and was then feeding his horses with them. This was the slander complained of. Plaintiff, in crossexamination, said he did not stop defendant’s visits to his family because of any improper intimacy between him and Mrs Lochhead ; hut solelv because he did not want a married woman associating with his daughters. He was under no obligations to dpfendapt, but admitted that he had gone

bail for him when he was bound over to keep the peace towards his step-son. He could not swear that he had not been fined in Dunedin for ill-treating his wife or some minor offence, but had no recollection of the circumstance. Defendant was sober when he made use of the expressions complained of. No apology was asked before bringing the action. The defence was that the words were used by the defendant when in an intoxicated state, and that they were not intended to be serious.

The jury found for the nlaintiff damages 20s.

Catomore (trustee in the estate of W. Fuller) v. Geo. Murray, a claim for a partnership shore in the Kerosene Bond, was part heard, and adjourned until to-morrow. The Great Extended Co. v. Rales and another, and Pritchard v. Gibbs, were adjourned to May 2.