ALLEGED BREACH OF PRICE ORDER

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23946, 13 May 1943, Page 3

ALLEGED BREACH OF PRICE ORDER

TRIBUNAL ORDERED TO PAY COSTS (P.A.) GISBORNE. May 12, Departing from what he described as the usual practice. Mr E. L. Walton, S.M.. to-day ordered the Price Investigation Tribunal to pay costs £3 3s. and witnesses’ expenses to a defendant who had been proceeded against for an alleged breach of a price order. When the tribunal’s counsel sought leave to withdraw the charge. Mr L. T Burnard for the defendant, asked for costs. He said that when an inspector asked for a certain brand of iodised salt, the defendant explained that he had none in stock. When the inspector explained that he wanted it because he suffered from a goitre, the defendant, as a special favour, sold him salt of another brand and not subject to a price order which he had procured for his own use, as he, too, suffered from a goitre. Defendant and his witnesses had twice attended Court for the hearing, vhich had not been proceeded with, and this was an added argument for al The' n Magistrate thdefendant special circumstances as the defendant had specifically called attention to the fact that he was not selling the bra nd of salt named in the price order, n would therefore allow costs^