HIGH COSTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 274, 14 July 1932, Page 2

HIGH COSTS

LITIGATION EXPENSE S IN HUNTER WILL CASE. WELLINGTON, Friday. The opinion that the total costs of litigation in connection with the estate of the late Sir George Hunter would exceed £5000 was ventured by counsel for the widow, Lady Edith May Hunter, in the course of his argument on th'e appeal case to-day in the Court of Appeal. Discussing the proposal put forward by Mr. Dunn, solicitor for Cyril Paul Hunter, the appellant, to borrow £50,000 from a private source in England to meet the immediate requirements of the estate, counsel for Lady Hunter charaeterised the amount as being utterly insufficient. Consideration for one thing, he said, had not been given to the question of the costs of the protracted litigation. Counsel said that already th'e litigation had occupied thirty days in Court. The services of five or six counsel had been retained, and a voluminous amount of solicitor's work had been done. At the trial in the Supreme Court a large number of witnesses, m'hny of whom were expensive witnesses, were called. A few had been paid. The others had not. One of Mr. Dunn's witnesses alone had sent in a bill for £250. Counsel said h'e was bold enough to say that £5000 would be insufficient to pay the costs.