Judgment Summons System.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2211, 5 September 1910, Page 6

Judgment Summons System.

j Recently there has been a tendency | for judgment summonses to increase considerably at the Magistrate's Court ! (says the Wellington ' Post'), and j the value and equity of this means of ! enforcing debts were discussed by both bench and bar to-day. One counsel suggested that the time was I ripe for legislation abolishing the sysI tern altogether, and that a commission I should be constituted to review exhaustively the merits of judgment summonses, and to devise some.practical means whereby the time of the court might be saved in favor of dafended actions. •' lam between the upper and the nether millstones in this matter," observed Mr Haselden, S.M.,*' between the plaintiff with his rights, and the defendant with his trouble." It was, he agreed, no plea sure for practitioners to come to court with judgment summonses, and ho had suggested that the pressure of civil business might be relieved by having special days for this particular class of business. Speaking to a Post representative subsequently, one counsel remarked that tradespeople have themselves largely to blame for the present state of affairs, through the extensive credit they give; if the_ judgment summonses were abolished, grocers, butchers, bakers, and others would be more careful as to whom they gave credit, when they knew that they could not get an enforcement of payment from the court At present a la»-ge number of debtors confess judgment, give a recital of embarrassments and woes which the court must take on trust, and often no orders are made. The remedy, he thought, lay ultimately with creditors themselves.