BUILDERS' CONTRACTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 14, 17 June 1913, Page 5

BUILDERS' CONTRACTS.

MEN OF STRAW. Per Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. , A suggestion.of interest to the building trade was made by counsel in the Magistrate's Court to-dav, before Dr. McArthur, S.M., during the hearing of a civil ease under the Wages Protection and Contractors' Liens Act. Ip drawing attention to the very large number of civil actions arising out of this Act which had been before His Worship during the last eighteen months or two years, counsel said that the matter called for a Magisterial pronouncement, tic cited one case in which o man, wKo was practically bankrupt, undertook a building contract, and through bejnir unabe'to meet his liabilities, deprived the subcontractors and traders, poor men, of the whole of the money that was due to them Most of the work oh the subcontract was represented by sub-confer*-tors own labor, and the builder's default meant that they had lost' th'eiir wagei lira was only one ofnumerons similaroases. Ihe practice of men of straw midonaking building contracts was so common that it behoved master builders ant architects to devise means by which 1* person would be given a contract unlew he submitted evidence that he was a man of substance. '