LANDLADY SUED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1024, 15 July 1930, Page 1

LANDLADY SUED

NURSE’S CLAIM FOR SLANDER EPISODE AFTER PARTY Press Associationr WELLINGTON, Today. “The ease is a most unusual one,’’ was the comment of Mr. E. Page, S.M., on a slander case before him yesterday. Ella Miller, a nurse, claimed £l5O damages from Mrs. E. S. Williams on "the ground of an alleged statement that plaintiff had a man iu her room till 4.30 a.m. The result was that she had been prevented for a long time from going on the nurses’ register and precluded from earning her livelihood. Defend ant was a boardinghouse keeper. According to -counsel's statement, plaintiff and another nurse returned late from a party and the next thing Miss Miller knew was that her door was flung violently open at 4.30 a.m by Mrs. Williams, who declared that both young women had a man In their rooms and raved about it iu violent language. Next morning she heard defendant telephoning to the matron of the Nurses’ Club accusing plaintiff to the same effect and when she intervened defendant again called into the telephone. “She did, matron, she did.” In evidence the other nurse said the man was with her, not with Miss Miller. For the defence the matron of the club would not say that Mfs. Williams had stated that the man was in Miss Miller’s room and could not remember what defendant had said when she first rang up. Plaintiff had not been offered any work by the Nurses’ Association since the report had first started. Defendant said she had found a man in the other woman’s room and had asked them both to leave To the matron she had stated the same. She rang up the matron later and said the man was found in the other’s room and not In Miss Miller’s. Counsel asked why she had had to do this unless she had first said the man was in Miss Miller’s room. The defendant said she could not say. Decision was reserved.