SUPREME COURT Defence Case Opened In Wharf-shed Claim

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31196, 21 October 1966, Page 7

SUPREME COURT Defence Case Opened In Wharf-shed Claim

The contract for the erection of the Cashin quay transit shed had been difficult, and time had been the essence of it, Mr P. H. T. Alpers told Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday. In the action being heard, John Burns and Company, Ltd., the roofing contractor (Mr C. E. Purchase, with him Mr J. H. M. Dawson), is claiming £2545 15s 3d as the amount owing on the contract plus interest, and £2OOO general damages, from John Cal-

der, Ltd., the principal contractor (Mr Alpers, with him Mr P. C. M. Straubel). John Calder, Ltd., counter-claims £2545 15s 3d—£1995 0s 3d as general damages and the remainder as money owing because of delays in completing the contract.

Mr Alpers, opening the defence case, said that the defendant had given the plaintiff no warranty as to the condition of the floor surface on which the plaintiff was to erect movable scaffolding. Other contractors had damaged the surface while working on the site. No-one knew when Mr Johnson, of John Burns and Company, Ltd., decided to do the roof first and not carry on in the terms of the contract notice, which set a different programme, but at that time there was an air of frantic haste about the contract. The defendant felt that, so long as it could get the plaintiff started on the job, even if this meant doing the whole of the roof first, it would do its best to arrange its own programmes.

The change by the plaintiff caused some changes by other sub-contractors, but though the painter concentrated on the roof he also did the walls as he went along.

The defendant placed the concrete sections of part of the walls which left the job ready for cladding. The plaintiff should then have put on another cladding gang, and there would then have been no practical difficulties. The tone of the defendant’s letters to the plaintiff about the time work began was one of trying to hurry the roof along. The plaintiff should have been on the site within two or three days of receiving the contract notice on September 8, but did not arrive till September 24. It then took 30 weeks to do the cladding, instead of the 19 weeks originally planned. The veranda was ready for cladding on November 25, but that work was not started till the end of January.

The plaintiff should have put other gangs on the job, as the veranda and roof, for example, did not have to be done in a sequence. Arthur Ross Morton, the defendant’s construction engineer for the first part of the contract, said in evidence that he heard no complaint from the plaintiff about its being unable to get on to the job on time, nor was it suggested to him that the plaintiff was losing money as a result.

Indecency Cliarg es The trial of a 38-year-old workman, Leslie Jacob Keene, on two charges of indecent assault on girls under 12, began before Mr Justice Macarthur and a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon, and was adjourned to this morning. Keene, who pleads not guilty and is defended by Mr D. H. Stringer, is alleged to have committed the assaults, on two different occasions, between April 1 and May 6 on small girls when in bed during stays overnight in his house.