CAT AND CANARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1930, Page 8

CAT AND CANARY.

LEGAL ODDITIES. QUEER CASES OF LAST YEAH. ADDEESS BY PROFESSOR ALGIE. "Some legal oddities of 1929" was the title of an interesting address which Professor Algie, dean of the department of law at Auckland University College, gave to-day to the members of the Karangahape Road Business Promotion Society at their luncheon meeting. Professor Algie said English law had produced its usual crop of strange cases as applied to wills. There was the case of a testatrix in England who had made a will disposing of her property in a particular manner, but then, owing to the death of all the legatees except her husband, a curious position arose. She had concluded that her husband was sufficiently provided for and had destroyed her will. The husband would have been provided for under the old law, but recent statutory changes in England provided quite otherwise. The case went to show the risk which testators might run in failing to appreciate the significance of changes in the law. The Courts took a broad view by deciding that, where a will was destroyed under a mistaken belief as to certain facts, these would not be held to alter the intended design of the will. Millionaire's Will. An American millionaire who died during 1929 left a will by which a trust was created for the advancement of the cause of co-operation between Capital and Labour. The Courts, however, defeated his object by declaring that the trust was not a charitable trust and, therefore, was automatically void. The millionaire's son, however, rose superior to the Courts and had indicated his intention of carrying out the trust notwithstanding , . The English Courts had solemnly decided that a man. who refused to live with his wife, who was consumptive, because he feared contagion, deserted her without just cause, and must continue to pay for her maintenance. Tt had been recently held that a marriage contracted under the law of Soviet Russia was not valid in England. This, said Professor Algie, caused one to tremble for the safety of the contented Russian woman who trusted herself to the protection of her Russian 'imsband,' , and then came to England. Might she not find, on her arrival, that she could not obtain maintenance from him because he was not her husband under English law? An American jury recently awarded to a murderer the moneys payable under insurance policies of his (the murderer's) wife. Such a conclusion would not be possible in most European countries. "Slighted Hospitality." Professor Algie mentioned a case heard in a French Court during the last few months in which damages had been awarded, on the grounds of slighted hospitality, against a guest who had failed to turn up at a host's party at the hour appointed for dinner. This was sufficiently amazing, but the legal world had been treated recently to a lurid example of the right to kill. America had gone a little further and had provided a case in which the right to lie was upheld. A modern illustration of the law of cat and canary occurred in a case last year, in which a citizen, whose canary had been severely mauled by si cat belonging to a neighbour, waited patiently for the return of the feline and attempted to square accounts by shooting it. His aim was defective, and he wounded it in one paw, thus exposing himself to a prosecution for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. If his aim had been truer, and he had shot the cat dead, he could possibly have been prosecuted for the destruction of the animal, but in that case the chances of success in the prosecution would have been very remote. These, and many other cases which could be cited, showed the pitfalls of the law.