COMPANY SUED

Hokitika Guardian, 22 June 1933, Page 5

COMPANY SUED

THE BOBBIE CASE FURTHER CLAIM AT WELLINGTON (Per Press Association —Copyright). WELLINGTON, June 21. The affairs of Reginald Charles Boddie and the syndicate formed for the manufacture of a disinfectant known as “Clarogene,” were again occupying the attention of Air Justice Ostler at the Supreme Court to-day. Botldic and his wife Hilda Alary Boddie, are proceeding against four members of the syndicate, James Dickson Sievwright, Alarguerite Helen Alilleer, William Thomson Neill, John AlcLachlan and the Clarogene Company, Ltd., alleging that notice of forfeiture of fivetwelfths of the shares which he and his wife held in the syndicate was illeg a]. After the notice of forfeiture of their shares had been served on the plain tiff’s by the other members of the syndicate, a private compatijq called the Clarogene Company, Ltd., was formed, arid in this company the plaintiffs claim they should be shareholders. The plaintiffs ask .. for a declaration that the sale by the defendants to tho defendant company of the Clarogene formula, and of the goodwill of the business of manufacturing and selling (Clarogene, is null and void; or, alternatively, a declaration that the defendant company holds the formula upon trust for the members of the syndicate, including the plaintiffs, a declaration, that the notice of forfeiture sent to tho plaintiffs was null and ineffective; a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from disclosing the formula to anyone else; and from manufacturing it otherwise than on behalf of the syndicate members including the plaintiffs • an account by the defendant company of any profits made by it from sales of or dealings in Carobene; £250 damages from the comapny for passing off an inferior preparation as Clarogene ; and £SOO damages from the four defendants for breach of. contract.

The defendants admit sending to plaintiffs the notice of forfeiture, setting out reasons for the action taken. Legal argument on the evidence adduced during the recent slander action, Boddie versus Sievwright, is now proceeding. Air Spratt submitted that the calculated object of the plaintiff in entering into an agreement with the defendants and the necessary effort of such agreement was to .default a third party, the “Nados” Company, and to injure it in respect to proprietary "rights. The case was not"merely one of fraud against defendants. If it were, then they would be under the necessity for repudiating before seeking relief. By defending the claim, they had not repudiated (»• rescinded, but, on the contrary, had averted to tile utmost all their rights.

Hi i Honour said he could understand the argument quite clearly if the article concerned were the patented one. 7 hen “Nados” could restrain tile defendants from using the formula. As it was now, the “Nados” Company had no complaint against the de.endants, the formula having been got in good faith. That was th e difficult he saw.

Air Evans Scott said that there was the suggestion that- the defendants intended to carry on in a way which would not legally or morally lie a breach of the rights of the Christchurch Company, but one witness, A; R. Roberts, in the preceding slander action, had said the defendants had’ told him if the present formula were not successful, it was intended to go back to the old one.

Ateer hearing legal argument, His Honour reserved his decision.