SUPREME COURT SITTINGS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 19 April 1901, Page 4

SUPREME COURT SITTINGS.

(per press association.)

Wellington, This Day. Justice Edwards was asked at the instance of the Public Trustee to apponion the estate of the late Thomas Banks, farmer of Brookside, Canterbury, valued at about £l4O. Banks was originally married in England and had children by that marriage. There was a separation, and Banks coming to this colony, and his former partner remaining in England, where she re-married. Banks also remarried with a woman who, by a singular coincidence, was of the same name as his first wife, in that her Christian name was Eleanor, and who had been twice previously married, her second husband being of the name Banks. These marriages and intermarriages have produced a crop of claimants, and the court is asked on the construction of the will to decide whether the residue is to be divided into two equal parts, the grandchildren taking one share and the children of the first Eleanor Banks the other. His Honor reserved judgment

Judgment in the case of Johanna Flockton and George Leonard, a suit for the specific performance of which contains some very unusual features, was delivered by Justice Cooper this morning. Plaintiff claimed the performance of an agreement fer sale by defendant to her of a piece of land in Dixon street for £7OO. The case was tried in March, and the defence set up was that the agreement was not sufficient to satisfy the Statute of Frauds and that defendant was so drunk at the time he executed the agreement as to be incapable of understanding its nature and effect. His Honor was of tho opinion as regards the first point, that there was a sufficient agreement within the statute, as to the other defendants witnesses they had in His Honor’s opinion greatly exaggerated Leonard’s cortdition.