GERALDINE RESIDENT MAGISTRATE’S COURT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1311, 5 March 1885, Page 3

GERALDINE RESIDENT MAGISTRATE’S COURT.

TO THE EDITOR. you kindly inform me through the medium of your widely-cir-culating paper if a person who brings a small-debt action against another, and the Magistrate without hearing a particle of evidence in support of the said action nonsuits the plaintiff on what he (the Magistrate) considers a technical point of law, has to pay for the hearing of the Court ? Storekeepers ought to know that by the Geraldine Magistrate’s ruling yesterday a husband not bound to pay his wife’s petty debts if they are living apart at the time the said debt is contracted. Note for storekeepers ; —“ You must make enquiries of a lady if she is living with her husband ; or, in any case, has she got her husband’s authority to get the goods ?” We had a number of storekeepers yesterday charged for light weights, etc., and no one seems to know the proper decision in each case. The Court officials and those present in Court don’t know. The fact is, the Magistrate was in far too great a hurry to get away to catch the north express, and, after all, I am told he lost the train. I have heard to-day by those who had business in the Court that they are very dissatisfied with this sort ol thing, and I am sorry to say it is getting quite a common occurrence, in the Geraldine Court.—l am etc.

Pro Bono Publico. Geraldine, March 3rd, 1885.