IN THE COURTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 8, 3 September 1912, Page 8

IN THE COURTS.

l'l'er Press Association.) Wangarmi, September 2. At the. Supreme Court to-day Henry Wolland was found not guilty on a charge of stealing a heifer at Palmerston North. This was the only criminal case before the Court. The Chief Justice congratulated the district on its freedom from crime. HAMILTON SESSIONS. Hamilton, September 2. At the Supreme Court, before Justice Cooper, Morgan Pataupatau pleaded guilty to forging a cheque for C7O, and was admitted to probation for a year and ordered to pay £5 Crown expenses. Harry Feltrim F.igan, charged with the theft of a cheque for £l3 seven years ago, was found not guilty. THE ETHICS OF "STOUSH." Hamilton, September 2. In the course of his address to the Grand Jury to-day, Judge Cooper made an important reference to prize fighting, when speaking of the case against a young man named Moore, ciharged with the manslaughter of a Maori named Taupiri, as a result of a bare knuckle fight for a wager, and who subsequently died. His Honor said that prize fights were unlawful in common law, and wore rendered unlawful by Statute in New Zealand, and it was a definite criminal offence for anyone to take part in a prize fight. The law on the matter was definite. He considered it of such importance that he had decided to put his opin ions on the matter in writing. Judge Cooper then read as follows:—"When one person is indicted for inflicting personal injury upon another, the consent of the person who sustained injury is no defence to the person who inflicts the injury if the injury was of such a nature, or is indicted under ?ueh circumstances, that its infliction is injurious to the public as well as to the person injured. Both injuries given and received in prize fights are injurious to the public, both becaurc it is against tike public interests that the lives and health of combatants should be endangered bv blows, and

beoan.se prize, fights are disorderly exhibitions and mischievous on many obvious grounds. Therefore, the consent of parties to blows which they mutually receive does not prevent those blows from being assaults, and in my opinion this principle of law is not confined to prize fights, for every fight in which the object and intrest of each of the combatants is to -t' • due the other by violent hbrr* : =

has, a direct tendency to a breach nl the peace, and r rentiers not whethei such a light he a 'ill" ight ocguu or continued in ame : • 1,1 ! :i ’ ,KO i n tor a money or olncr auvamayy.