MAGISTERIAL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2689, 1 November 1881, Page 3

MAGISTERIAL.

TIMAEU—THIS DAY. (Before E. Beetham, Esq., 8,M.) BREACH OF INDENTURES. E. F. Pountley and W. Peters, two apprentices, the former of W. Hobbs, master tailor, and the latter of J. E. Beckingham, cabinetmaker, were charged with absenting themselves from the service of their respective masters. . These youths had gone to Christchurch en route to “ the front,” without the leave of their masters. Mr Beetham said he supposed that all that was required was that the young men be ordered to return to tbeir work. Addressing them he said —I can quite understand your being seized with martial ardor and a desire to go to the field, but you had better go back to your work; you will be better off there. That is all ; you may go. . CIVIL CASES. McLeish v. Humphries—Claim £IOO. Reserved case. In this case Mr Beetham gave judgment to day. The case was this— Defendant purchased 20 head cattle for £IOO from plaintiff, and agreed to give a three months bill for_ them. The bill was not given and plaintiff sued as for goods sold and delivered. At the hearing of the case Mr Haraersley, for the defendant, asked for a nonsuit on the ground that plaintiff having agreed to accept a bill no cause of action could arise until the term agreed upon had expired. There were other points in the case, but a nonsuit was granted on the ground stated. The case Webb and Penny v. Stubbs, a case involving legal points, was further reserved for a fortnight, in the absence of counsel on both sides. Dr Lovegrove and Dr Hammond’s Trustees v. Canning, and J. Jackson v. Evans, were struck out in the absence of the plaintiffs. Lewis Moses v. Francis Clayton, claim £7, due on promissory note. This $3 was a judgment summons, judgment having gone by default at the first”hearing of the case. Mr White appeared for the defendant, and cross-examined the plaintiff as follows :

You are suing upon a promissory note. Have yon the note with you ? I do not know. What nonsense. Surely you-‘know whether you brought it or pot. —I do not know. I may have it with me, but I cannot tell till I look in my pocketbook. [Pocket-book brought forth, and from it the document wanted.] I believe you lent £5 on this bill ?—I decline to answer that question. Mr Beetham—You must answer it.— Yes, I lent it. Mr White. —You charged him £2 for interest ?—No. He agreed to pay me 7s a week for twenty weeks, and if he failed in any payment he was to be fined Is per week. That was the agreement when I lent him the £5. Why did you fill up the bill for the whole amount to be paid in one week ? —That was in order that I might be able to sue him at the end of the twenty weeks if he did not pay the instalments. I agreed not to use the„bill did. He made some payments —I don t know how many—three or four, not more than five, before I sued him. You used to put down the payments in a little black book, I understand; where is that book ? I do not know. It°was filled up, and as it was no more use I did not keep it. I have not seen it for several months. , To the Bench—l sued for the whole amount of the bill, £7. I did not deduct anything on account of what I had

received; it took more than that to pay the fines. A great many fines were due, because it was toward the end of the twenty weeks that the payments were made. Mr White—You swore that the particulars of your account were correct; that the whole of the £7 was due, and no credit was given for, instalments received—the fines that he had made himself subject to, of a shilling a week on each overdue payment, amounted to more than I had received. Let me explain—lf the 7s due the first week was not paid, the fine of Is a week would amount in twenty weeks to 20s; if the second instalment was not paid the fines at the end of that time would amount to 19s, and so on. Mr Beetham—Go on ; this is capital. Compound interest is a fool to it. It is easy enough to understand; it only requires a pretty good head to reckon the amounts up. Plaintiff—The fines amounted to more than I had received. Mr Beetham—That is easy to see. They would not take long to sum up £IOO. Mr White—lt was on this promissory note that you got judgment: you forgot to state, though you were on oath, that you had received any money in diminution of the debt. —The money I had received was to pay the fines. Did you give him any receipts for the payments ?—I did not. I told him there was no necessity for receipts. I told him I would enter the payments in a book.

And you refuse to produce the book ? —I do not refuse. I have not got it now. It is months since I saw it. Is this one of the lost books ? —No it is not.

Did I not see you looking at that very book a few minutes ago; just before the case was called on ? —No you did not.

You refused to give receipts, and do not produce the books in which the payments were entered, so that he has no check upon you.—He knew that as soon as he paid the 20 instalments he would get the promissory note back again. Do you know what interest £2 would be on £5 for a year ? No, I never calculated it.

Don’t you know that it would be 40 per cent, and that for 20 weeks it would be 100 per cent? I don’t reckon by per centages. (Mr White —No, you reckon by fines.) I lend money under great risks and if the accommodation is worth £2 to a man I have a right to charge that and cover the risk. C. Kelly and J. Nelson, master tailors, were called by plaintiff to show that defendant had been in receipt of good wages from time to time since the the judgment was obtained. He had been earning in their respective employ Is an hour, or £3 10s a week for short periods. Mr White then called the defendant, who stated that in the month of February last he went to defendant’s shop and negotiated a loan, receiving £5, and agreeing to give £2 for interest and to repay the whole by twenty weekly instalments of 7s each. He had himself made six payments to plaintiff, on one occasion paying 14s, and his employer, Mr Hobbs, and Mr Hobbs’ son had each paid an instalment for hifh at his request, making nine instalments altogether. He asked plaintiff to give him receipts, but he refused to do so, saying it would be all right, he would enter the payments in a little memo book. He saw him enter some of them. After the payments were made he was to get the promissory note back. He heard nothing about fines. There was not a word said about fines when the bargain was made. He was accidently detained from coming to town on the day the original summons was due. He was not in a position to pay the amount now, but would endeavor to pay 7s a week according to the original arrangement. Mr White proposed to call two witnesses, Mr Hobbs and his son, to prove the two payments mentioned by defendant as having been made by them, but His Worship said it would be a waste of time to call them. Addressing the plaintiff, he said ;—You obtained judgment against this man,in his absence, on a promissory note for £7, on account of which, according to your own admission now, you had received several sums without giving him credit for them, and the only reason you give for not giving him credit for them is that you had a system of fines, a system that, whether agreed to or not by defendant, can only be described as absolutely monstrous. Plaintiff—But you see I might lose nearly the whole sum, so bow could I aing by it. His Worship—l don’t wish to press hardly upon you. Perhaps the £5 was very useful to this man, and there would be no difficulty about it, although the interest is so high, if you had acted straightforwardly. Upon your own statement I shall decline to make any order that would carry the alternative of throwing this man into prison. No Magistrate would be justified in making such an order.

Plaintiff —It was not my intention to insist upon the fines. I simply wanted the £7 paid in twenty instalments, and then he would get his bill back again. His Worship—You have not acted fair and above board. You should have given him receipts ; your refusal to give them makes the transaction look bad. The mere suggestion that receipts are not needed tends to throw discredit upon any transaction of this kind. That' suggestion—it was your own, not his—makes it look very bad indeed. I cannot understand a man. having the knowledge you have, asking a Magistrate to send a man to prison for a case of this kind.

Mr White asked for expenses, when plaintiff objected, he had lost enough. His Worship—lt is no use of you trying to justify the transaction to me, for it is utterly unjustifiable. The defendant does not come out of it very creditably, he should have endeavored to pay the amount originally advanced, and in this case I should not advise him to pay any more. These transactions may be useful, but they are not the kind of cases to be brought into any Court. The summons was dismissed, the expenses of two witnesses of the defendant, and solicitor’s fee being allowed. Another judgment summons was adjourned to the 11th to give defendant time to make something out of a holiday time speculation if possible and the Court then rose. TEMUKA—YESTEEDAY. (Before P. N. Wood, Esq. E.M.) ASSAULT. Peter Thompson was charged by E.

F. Gray with assaulting him on Tuesday last. Mr Jameson appeared for the plaintiff. It appeared from the evidence that complainant was one of the trustees in the bankrupt estate of defendant's father, and went down to a certain farm in the bankrupt’s occupation, in his capacity of trustee, to remove certain horses to another place. The defendant met him there and objected to the animals being removed, whereupon Gray warned him to be careful, and told him he was aiding and abetting. Defendant then struck him a violent blow on the face, and Gray closed with him to save himself from further blows, and both fell to the ground. Defendant admitted that he struck a blow when he was told he was aiding and abetting. He was fined £5 with the alternative of one month imprisonment with hard labor. AN IMPOUNDING CASE. D. Leach summoned M.JConolly for illegally rescuing cattle seized for the purpose of impounding. Complainant’s own statement showed that though the cattle were trespassing on his ground, Conolly was going for them and had taken charge of them before complainant did so. He was fetching them out of the paddock when complainant shut the gate to prevent prevent him from doing so. Mr Jameson, for defendant, 'asked that the case be dismissed on the complainant’s own evidence, and the,Magistrate followed that course. CIVIL CASES. Judgment for plaintiffs was given in two cases ;—F. Oldfield v. F. Innes—claim £2B, and W. Essery v. J. Roddick —claim £4 6s 4d—less £1 4s 2d. The plaintiffs in two actions were nonsuited : Ormond v. Connolly claim £79 lls Id for work done, on the ground that the work was done under a written agreement which was not produced, and Essery v. Louis—claim £2 5s 9d, on the ground of want of juris diction. The Court then adjourned.