The Ward Company Scandal.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 293, 17 June 1896, Page 2

The Ward Company Scandal.

■o CONTINUATION OF JUSTICE WILLIAMS' DECISION.

iPer Press Association) Dunedin June 16. After discussing Mr Ward's private liabilities, the Judge remarked he did not understand why the Bank accepted bis promissory note for £55,150, as it could be of little or no value to the Bank, There was nothing to show Mr Ward had then any property not included in the present lists. His liabilities were all with a trifling exception incurred in connection with the Association. Here then was a company or association with a capital actually paid up in cash of £12,450, whicb, after three years business, had become hopelessly insolvent and shows a deficiency of over £100,000. It was hardly too much to say that in substance Mr Ward and the Association must for most purposes have been identical. Mr Ward was now hopelessly insolvent. A few pence in the £ is the utmost his estate can be expected to realised. That tbe career of tbe Association should be brought to an end and its proceedings investigated, and tbat tbose who were responsible for its management should no longer be allowed to roam at large through the business world, was the result so obviously desirable in the interests of commercial morality, that it ought if possible be obtained now. It is with the avowed intention of preventing this result that the purchasers under tbe present agreement bave come forward. Mr Woodhouse states it is not like an ordinary bnsiness transaction where the purchasers expect to make a profit, but they were buying out of friendship for Mr Ward in the hope of being able to put tbe Association on its feet again. That is to say the evil will deliberately be done so as to hide tbe past as far as possible, and that Mr Ward's bankruptcy will be purposely prevented and things generally made pleasant. By the present agreement every debt of Mr Ward's on every accouutwas purchased and lumped in one purchase witb the debt of the Association. Though Mr Ward's debt will yield but au infinitesimal dividend, the whole action of the purchasers was taken, as Mr Woodhouse candidly admitted, out of friendship for Mr Ward and in order to avert the necessity for his bankruptcy. It is thus an offer to buy off from bankruptcy and its consequences the man who ought not to escape them. In effect it is an offer of hush money. He quite understood the purchasers themselves were actuated only by honest motives. It comes, however, to the same thing whether a debtor to tbe Bank offers a compromise for so much in the £, or to get a friend to come forward to buy it for the same amount. He bad no hesitation, therefore, in refusing to sanction the agreement, though he did not for a moment mean to say tbe liquidators were wrong in bringing it before the Court or entitled to anything but credit for doing so. The Judge concluded by remarking that some reference had been made to Mr Ward's political position, but with tbat he had nothing to do. He looked on the case from its commercial aspect only. The summons was therefore dismissed.