LIBEL ACTION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 33, 7 February 1913, Page 3

LIBEL ACTION.

THE MAORILAND WORKER IN COURT. (Per Press Association.) Auckland, February 6. The Supreme Court was occupied in an action by Thomas Walsh, of. Auckland, against the New Zealand Federation of Labor and Alexander Grigg, claiming £450 damages for alleged libel, which was contained in the Maoriland Worker of October 4. Plaintiff was proprietor of the newspaper. The Voice' of Labor, published at Auckland, and Secretary of the Auckland Council of United Labor Party. The libel complained of charged plain tiff with tra velling to Waikino to organise “scabs,” the words used in one part being— “We say, in the history of the Australasian Labour Party is not on record an incident so traitorous or so astardly as that this Walsh, in the sacred name of the Labour Party, fool ami! knave both; has been associated with'

an official organ rotten to the core, ami time and again has wantonly and wickedly spoken as a credentialied lafKiur ropre.senfcativo in a way that in a Russian movement would sen him lianged, and in a movement anywhere else than New Zealand would see him drummed out as worse than Judas, as contemptible as all kpown rats and agents of provocateurs.” Mr Newton appears for the prosecution, and Sir John Findlay and Mr J. I*. Oregon for defendants. The statement of defence sets up justification and pleads that the paragraph in question was fair comment j in a, discussion on the industrial j question in which Walsh attacked the j Federation in violent language. :