“VICIOUS AND UNTRUE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1051, 15 August 1930, Page 16

“VICIOUS AND UNTRUE”

MAGISTRATE’S COMMENT IN SLANDER SUIT MALICIOUS INTENT PROVED “I find, so far as the defence of non-publication is concerned, that the publication of the slanders is proved and established by Jhe evidence. Further, it appears rom the nature of the allegations that they were untrue and particularly vicious. The publication was undoubtedly malicious.” These were the words used by Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M., in awarding damages amounting to £220, for false and malicious defamation, to Mrs. Colin David Smith, of Kawaha Point, at the Rotorua Magistrate's Court. The defendant was Thomas Henry Hulton, formerly employed by the plaintiff’s husband as a chauffeur. “From Hulton’s explanation in the witness box,” said the magistrate, “I am totally unable to believe a word that he says. ... It is clear that the statements set out in the statement of claim were made, and it is proved that these statements were false. This is clear from the evidence of Mr. McDonald, manager of the Hotel Auckland, and Mr. Harvey, manager of the Grand Hotel, Rotorua. ... It is perfectly clear that I cannot believe the evidence of Hulton, who before this court admitted himself by his demeanour in the witness box a perjurer and a blackguard. It seems to me clear that the statements made by Hulton are little more than the figments of the disordered imagining of a drink-sodden and drug-infested mind. .. . The slanders were particularly vicious, affecting a woman’s good name. They are slanders for which damages can in no sense be an appropriate or adequate reparation.”