ROTORUA LAND DEAL

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 251, 21 October 1921, Page 5

ROTORUA LAND DEAL

— _■ -, ■» I HUSINESS METHOD CRITICISED AGREEMENT DECLARED VOID. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) HAMILTON, this day. , Mr. Justice Stringer gave judgment in the Supreme Court yesterday in the case in which William James Smith and Edward La Trobe (land agent), of Rotorua. sued William Galbraith, carrier, of Rotorua, for specific performance of an agreement of sale and purchase of certain land at Rotorua. The land was sold at auction by the Rotorua Auctioneering Company, and the defence was that certain representations made by the auctioneer regarding tbe freehold were not authorised by the vendor, and that a member of the auctionering firm, one Granville Hunt, signed the execution of the agreement without defendant's permission. His Honor, after commenting upon the loose manner in which the auction sale had been conducted by the Rotorua Auctioneering Company, no proper conditions of sale having been prepared, not any contract for sale being ' effected after the conclusion of the sale, held, first, that the statement made by Davys as to what had taken place at the auction prior to the sections being put up for sale, was substantially correct, and was corroborated not only by defendant's witnesses, but Iby several of plaintiffs' own witnesses. Ac a result of these statements by the auctioneer, he held that defendant had offered for sale not the freehold of the sections as contended by plaintiffs, but merely such interest in the leasehold as he himself possessed. He held, further, that the agreement exceeded the authority given by defendant, and that defendant wa_. not therefore bound by it. Defendant was therefore entitled to judgment, but his Honor postponed entering up formal judgment for one week, in order to give plaintiffs time within wiiich to elect whether they were prepared to take the property upon the terms upon which the defendant in his statement of defence Offered to transfer the property. Defendant, his Honor ruled, was entitled to hie costs as per scale. ...<..