SALE OF MORTGAGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 606, 7 March 1929, Page 1

SALE OF MORTGAGE

buyer alleges fraud

LAW CLERK TO PAY £3BB

Judgment was given this morning by Mr. Justice Kennedy in a case which came before the Supreme Court on February 27, in which Oliver Sextus Blair, a boot machinist, sued Alexander Henry Martin, a clerk, for the return of £4OO paid for a second mortgage alleged to have been sold fraudulently and which later proved to be worthless.

Mr. R. G. Sellar, for Blair, said that plaintiff had been a client of Messrs. Bennett and Jacobsen, solicitors, for whom defendant was working as a law clerk. In 1925 plaintiff wished to invest a sum of £ 600 or £ 800, and .Martin showed him a property on which there was a second mortgage of £4OO which was for sale. It was alleged that defendant was I the owner of this property and that, when he sold it to plaintiff for £360 he did not admit that he owned it. Plaintiff received interest for three years, but when there was default in 1923 inquiries were made and the true owners were discovered. Plaintiff therefore claimed that defendant, while acting in a fiduciary j rapacity had made false representu- ' tiona when he did not disclose him- j self as owner of the mortgage, and had been negligent in failing to regis- j the transfer. Claim was made for ; £360 with £39 10s 6d as accrued in- j terest, or else £ 400 damages.

Mr. Justice. Kennedy agreed with the allegations of false representation and set aside the sale of the mortgage. He awarded defendant £3BB Is Id. with costs according to scale and witnesses’ expenses and disbursements.