ACTED RIGHTLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 259, 1 November 1932, Page 5

ACTED RIGHTLY.

SOLICITOR'S DISCLOSURES. FRAUDULENT SCHEME ALLEGED. There was a brisk interchange at the Supreme Court yesterday between a barrister and a solicitor dining the hearing of a charge or perjury. Mr. Allan Moody, counsel for accused, was cross-examining Robert E. Fawcett, solicitor, who was a witness for the Crown. Fawcett stated that a man' had come to him with a proposition. This man offered to finance claims against insurance companies in cases where evidence was weak and people had no money. He would make an agreement with an injured person whereby that person would receive half the amount recovered, and that agreement would be handed to witness. Then this man would prepare the brief, interview the witnesses, hand, them over to witness and brief him, and guarantee him costs if it came to trial, but in any case would give him half the amount received. Mr. Fawcett said he had decided that this was not straight practice, and he consulted the president of the Law Society. He also informed Mr. Atwool, an insurance adjuster, that such a fraud —for in his opinion it was a fraud —had been euccesaful, and was going to be worked again.

Mr. Moody asserted that Fawcett had worked himself into the ease by seeing the insurance people. This remark evoked a rebuke from Mr. Justice Herdman, who told Mr. Moody he had no right to eay that. Mr. Fawcett had done what was perfectly right.

It was stated later In the hearing by Detective Sergeant Doyle that Mr. Fawcett had made some inquiries before the matter reached the police, and Mr. Fawcett had given witness the result of those inquiries.