A NAPIER SENSATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 459, 2 April 1890, Page 4

A NAPIER SENSATION.

CURIOUS BILL TRANSACTIONS.

Napier, March *29. The Napier Supreme Court was occupied yesterday in the partial hearing of the first of a series of curious bill cases. Some time ago an old settler named William Fletcher died, leaving all his property by will to Joseph Parker, a local blacksmith, overlooking all his relations. The relations disputed .the will, when it was found that Parker had some £5,000 worth of promissory notes of Fletcher’s under discount with different banks and people. The first bills had been given years ago, but Fletcher never paid a single one. always giving other bills which were “ melted ” to take the others up, and his relatives had not the slightest idea that the bills were in existence. When the will case came before tho Supreme Court at the last sittings, before th 3 case for Parker was finished his counsel threw up their briefs, assigning no reason, and soon afterwards Parker disappeared quietly, and is believed to be in America, Fletcher’s executors refused to meet any of the bills, and are now defending a crop of actions brought bv different holders. The first is that of the Colonial Bank, which discounted for H. Napthali, money lender, two bills for £325 and £125, which Naphtali had discounted for Parker. There are many heads to the defence, but the main contention is that Parker got bills of £5 each from Fletcher, leaving spaces in which he could fill in words and figures necessary to make the bills of the value they bore on their face when presented to Naphtali for discount. There is no imputation that Naphtali or the Bank had any suspicion of the bona tides ai the bills, though it is contended that oertain irregularities in thq writing and figures between the portions admitted to be genuine and these claimed as forgeries should have aroused suspicion.