AN INTERESTING CASE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 19 February 1913, Page 5

AN INTERESTING CASE

(By Teleijraph. —I'rcss Association.) WELLINGTON. Last Night.

A test case concerning rates was brought before Mr Justice Chapman at the Supreme Court this morning, on a summons removed from the Magistrate's Court. The plaintiff was the Wellington City Corporation, and the defendants were: Hamilton Gilmer, M.L.C., Allen Maguire, settler; John O'Kane, clerk, Charles Perrin Skerrett K.C., solicitor, and Mary Ami Wardle, settler, all of Wellington. The defendants, it was set out in the statement of claim, are the owners of the Trocadero Private Hotel, upon which a sum of £l3 13s lOd is due for electric heat, light and power supplied. Pursuant to "the provisions of the .Rating Act, 1908, the City Council on Ist June, 1912, demanded this amount, which it was claimed, was recoverable as.a separate rate from the owners of the property. The demand was not complied with, and an action to recover the amount wag therefore brought by the Corporation. The defendants, for whom Sir John Findlay appeared, disputed, the Corporation's right to recbver the amount, and as a separate rate. Sir John Findlay stated that the question for the Court was: Is a Municipal Corporation, which owns or controls' a gas or electric light supply, entitled to recover (under the Rating Act)

from a landlord as a separate rate, the price of gas or electrical energy consumed by a tenant for light, heat, or power, when the tenant had failed to Day Mr O'Shea, City Solicitor, contended that under the Municipal Corporations Act and the Rating Act, the Council possessed the power to enforce this as a separate rate against the landlord, and the amount was recoverable in the same way as other rates Decision was reserved.