INTERESTING TO NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1761, 6 December 1917, Page 3

INTERESTING TO NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS.

LAAVYERS’ LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. 1 [Feilding Star.] A defeuce''of considerable interest to newspaper proprietors was successful so tar as the nonsuiting of a plaintiff in a case before Air Kenrick, at the Magistrate’s Court, Palmerston, on a technical point which we are surprised a firm of the standing of Innes and Oakley should have utilised. It appears that the firm in question inserted in the Foxton “Herald” an advertisement of the sale of property under the instructions of the Registrar of the Supreme Court. The latter specified the journal and the number of insertions, and the legal linn gave an open order for the insertion of the advertisement. The Foxton “Herald” inserted the advertisement in .the usual Avay, in the ordinary type used in the paper. AVhcn the bill Avas sent in, Messrs limes and Oakley protested against the cliarge, and fonvarded a cheque for the amount, less £2. AVhcn the case Avas heard, Air Frceth, of the AlanaAvalu Times, and Mr Coombs, of the AlahaAvalu Standard, gave evidence to the effect that the charge was too high, as (he atßerlisement could have been set in smaller type! An adjournment was obtained to get the evidence of Air Fred. Pirani for the plaintiff. The latter supported the justice of the account first rendered, pointed out that it avus the general custom of ncAvspapers to insert advertisements in the ordinary type used for that purpose by the neAvspaper in question, (fiat the charge was (he ordinary one (producing proof of that statement by Avhat was paid for similar advertisements), that the lime, to specify any departure from the ordinary rule Avas when the advertisement was ordered, and not after it had been inserted, and that it was impossible the cost of an advertisement in one paper by what it Avould cost in another, as there Averc no two papers in New Zealand which used the same- type. In regard to a. statement by the laa-o Avitnesses for the defence, that the advertisement was “leaded” to increase the size, Air Pirani pointed out that it wqs not so, apd if the witnesses Iqul known anything of the linotype they would have understood that the advertisement was set in type “cast on bar,” exactly the same as every other line in the paper. It seemed clear that the defence of over-cliarge was hopeless, and so the defendants raised the defence that, they were agents and not principals, and nonsuit \Vas given. Noav, in the letter ordering the advertisement, no such statement Asms made, so that it appears that a newspaper may he unfairly treated and have no redress except against a presumably unknoAvn principal. This is a matter which the N.Z, Newspaper Proprietors’ Association should take up, although we doubt the possibility of other legal firms placing their clients in the unpleasant position of being sued for a matter of £2 in such a case.