An interesting Case.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 181, 4 February 1896, Page 3

An interesting Case.

< (Per Press Association) We__ikgton, February 3. The case Robertson v. Gordon, claim £500 for wrongful imprisonment, was heard in the Supreme Court this afternoon, and a verdict was returned by the jury for _250. According to plaintiff's story, Messrs A. and J. Robertson, : blacksmiths,' of Palmerston North, early in 1895 commissioned a man named Michael Ryan to proceed to Sydney to purchase for them a certain maiden trotting horse. Ryan was instructed that if he could buy this particular horse he was to send for the money. On June 4th telegraphed that he could buy it, and Robertsons sent him the £'38 required. Later m the month Ryan arrived at Napier with a trotting mare nanied Maggie— not the horse he had been ordered to buy, but one he considered a superior animal. The Robertsons did not like the look of Maggie, and refused to take it, whereupon Ryan offered to obtain for them another horse named Hero. He did not get Hero for i&em, and the Robertson's becoming about their money; Ryan in banded over to them ,as' security mare Maggie. Gordon, owner of Maggie and defendant in the present action, who is a resident in Sydney, came to New Zealand in August after bis mare, and calling on the Robertsons asked them where they had obtained the animal, and stating that he bad only leased it to Ryan. The Robertsons declined to give up the mare until they were satisfied this was correct, and Gordon, after showing them some papers purporting to be the lease of the animal, threatened to take action against them for stealing it. He declined to submit the question of ownership to disinterested persons, and ultimately had them arrested on the charge of stealing the mare. The arrests were made in public and were telegraphed all over New Zealand. After several remands the charge was inquired into and dismissed. The Robertsons now claimed £500 as damages for malicious prosecution.