SUPREME COURT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 144, 14 December 1911, Page 5

SUPREME COURT.

OUTSIDE THE PALE OF HUMANITY. By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, Yesterday. In the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Edwards sentenced William Thomas Edmiston, for indecent assault on a child at Rotorua, to seven years' hard labor and ten years' reformatory treatment. The crime was a particularly serious one, the Judge remarking that prisoner was unfit to be at large. He was outside the pale of humanity, and no creature that walked the earth needed reformative treatment more.

TRAMWAY ACCIDENT,

Blenheim, Last Night. The Supreme Court was occupied yesterday and to-day in hearing a case in which Margaret Corliss sued the Marlborough Timber Company for £2OOO damages for the death of her husband, John Corliss, at Oporiari Valley, when the company's engine was derailed. Another case, in regard to Anderson,, killed at the same time and place, was also heard. It was agreed that the evidence in one case was applicable to the other, and the, same verdict, if any, was to be accepted. Considerable evidence was called with the object of showing that defendant's tramline, from which the engine was derailed, was defective, and that deceased, though they had knocked off work for the day,-were still in the employ of the company while on the way from the bush to the mill, and that the rate of speed of the engine was excessive. The defence was that the line was a suitable one, and that deceased were on the engine at their own risk. Mr. O'Regan, of Wellington, appeared for the claimants, and Mr. T. G. Russell, of Christchurch, for the defendant. A verdict for £3OO was returned.