DIVORCE COURT.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2672, 30 October 1882, Page 3

DIVORCE COURT.

This Day. [Before his Honor Mr Justice Johnston.] LONG V LONG AND STOKES. ■ This was a petition for a dissolution of marriage. Mr Joyce appeared for the petitioner. There was no appearance for the respondent or co-respondent. The evidence in this case was hoard on a previous Court day, when judgment was deferred. His Honor now gave judgment as follows : The facts proved before me in this case were such as to induce me to take time to consider whether I ought to make a decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage. Recent legislation, which has thrown on a single Judge the responsibility of granting divorces a vinculo matnmonii, and which, by diminishing the cost and the time required for obtaining a decree of dissolution, will probably tend to increase the number of applications to the Court, renders it incumbent on the Judges to be more than ever careful, lest undue facilities should be afforded for the disruption of the matrimonial bond between persons who are disposed to treat that obligation with levity, and are ready to connive at each others immorality, or to collude for the purpose of ridding themsedves of their mutual responsibilities, and indulging their own caprices or passions. I think that it would he a truly deplorable state of society in which proceedings for divorce wore stimulated or encouraged by treating a decree of dissolution as almost a matter of course in undefended eases. In tliis particular case the evidence of the petitioner seems to indicate a degree of negligence or carelessness about the conduct of his wife which was, at least to some extent, blameworthy. The respondent had been a barmaid before the petitioner married her. She was young, good-looking, and lively. She went on a visit to Dunedin with her bushand’s consent, and wrote to him once soon after, saying she was enjoying herself. The petitioner stated that she mentioned in her letter that she was going to take a place as barmaid, and that ho wrote once to her and intimated that ho disapproved of her doing so. He said that he did not write to her again because she did not answer his first letter. This letter was written about the month of March, and the petitioner took no further stops to bring his wife homo, or to prevent her from acting.as barmaid, although ho admitted ho was well aware of the temptations to wh’ch a barmaid is exposed, until be heard some reports about her in the month of June. He does not seem, in the interval, to have taken any trouble about her, to have ordered or requested her to return, to have gone after her, or communicated with her mother in Dunedin about her ; and thus it seems clear that he left her subject to those temptations to which he knew a person in her position to

be specially exposed, and to which she probably fell a victim. The question therefore, suggesting itself whether the petitioner did not connive at his wife’s misconduct, or was not guilty of wilful neglect conducing to it. Volenti non fit infuria is a maxim that pervades our law. No one can complain of that to which heassents. But on the whole Ithinkit would be carrying the doctrine too far to apply it to such a case as this. Although the petitioner might probably have prevented the commission of adultery by the respondent and co-respondent if he had exercised his marital authority by bringing her home and looking more carefully after her, I can hardly conclude that he connived at her guilt in the sense of procuring it, or assenting to it; nor am I quite satisfied that he was guilty of such wilful neglect as conduced to it.

As to the question of collusion, although the extraordinary and very unsatisfactory evidence of the witness who conducted the proceedings of the petitioner as his friend, and went to Dunedin to serve the citation, raised some suspicion of collusion among the parties, I do not think that such collusion was actually established. On the whole, therefore, I pronounce a decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage. Mr Joyce asked if his Honor would order costs against the co-respondent. His Honor —I think not, Mr Joyce. The Coiut then rose.