TENANTS USE OF HOUSE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28671, 22 August 1958, Page 16

TENANTS USE OF HOUSE

Hens Roosted On Stove

(New Zealand Press Association) \TAURANGA, August 21. ‘‘l don’t believe Mclssaac or his wife,” said Mr Stewart Hardy, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Tauranga'today. ‘‘l am satisfied that they use the premises in a way in which no decent people would contemplate.” He was giving judgment in favour of John Mason, a pie-cart proprietor of Opotiki, against Desmond Mclssaac, of Muricata avenue, Mount Maunganui, in a claim for rent and damages, after allowing for a counter claim for the return of goods left by Mclssaac in a house. “I am also satisfied that Mason had every reason to be apprehensive and to take exception to what he found in the house. It must have been appalling to him, as it was to me when I saw those photographs,” said the Magistrate. r

He was satisfied that Mclssaac had allowed the poultry on the premises without care or worry In the course of his evidence, Mason produced photographs showing fowls roosting on an electric stove and on the mantelpiece in the kitchen, and the floors, walls and furniture covered with fowl droppings. Mason told the Court it took him two days to clean up the filth and bird droppings, after which he had to fumigate the whole house and re-paint two rooms. The Magistrate ordered that Mclssaac pay £BO 10s Id to Mason who had claimed £137 12s Id. The Magistrate said he was satisfied that Mclssaac entered into an agreement with Mason to rent the house at £2 15s a week and that Mason had had the agreement completed by his solicitor. ’ Mclssaac had found devious excuses for not paying. He believed Mason and entirely disbelieved Mclssaac, and was satisfied that it would be stretching the bounds of credulity to an impossible basis where anyone could believe Mclssaac obtained possession of a new house for the purpose of using it as a store, said the Magistrate.