CREAM SALES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25365, 12 December 1947, Page 5

CREAM SALES

RESERVED JUDGMENT GIVEN COMPANY’S CLAIM SUCCESSFUL Judgment for the plaintiff (the Canterbury Dairy Farmers’ Co-operative Milk Supply Company, Ltd.) was given by Mr Raymond Ferner, S.M., yesterday, for the sum of £2B 4s against Frank C. Platt, fruiterer, in a reserved decision.

The case was heard on December 2. The plaintiff claimed £2B 4s for cream sold and delivered to the defendant over a period between September, 1945, and January, 1946. "During the hearing questions were put to the plaintiff company’s witnesses suggesting that they and the plaintiff company were aware that the cream supplied was being sold on ’the black market’,” said the Magistrate. "It was further suggested that the reason the company supplied on a 'cash' was that it wished to avoid a record of sales of ‘black market’ cream.

“In his own evidence the defendant Platt did not hesitate to admit that he had sold cream to his customers without a permit and that he had no permit to buy cream,” continued the judgment. "It is apparent that the suggestion that the plaintiff company was guilty of a breach of the regulations as they existed at the time of the supply is quite unfounded. The regulations relating to the supply over the relevant period are the Rationing Emergency Regulations, 1942, Amendment No. 3. Amendment No. 3 was published in the New Zealand Gazette on August 25, 1944, and was in force at all times material to this action. By regulation 6 of Amendment No. 3 the use and consumption or supply of cream to any other person who is not a trader in cream is prohibited, except under the authority of a permit granted by the controller. The defendant at the time of these sales of Cream was carrying on the business of supplying cream and was therefore a trader. The supply of cream to a trader did not require the issue of a permit from the controller.

"New provisions came into force on April 15, 1946, under which cream was for the first time brought into the list of rationed goods, and under which retailers of cream were required to be licensed and consumers were required to be registered. These provisions had no application to the transactions in the present case, which occurred over a period from September, 1945, to January, 1946, and before the latest regulations had been provided.”