JUDGMENT RESERVED

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 114, 7 February 1935, Page 9

JUDGMENT RESERVED

New Zealand Case Before Privy Council London, February 5. The Privy Council reserved judgment in the New Zealand case of Barton and others versus Moorhouse and others. A judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered in October, 1933, decided that William Henry Rhodes Moorhouse, son of the late Captain W. B. Rhodes Moorhouse. was entitled under the will of the late Hon. W. B. Rhodes to a vested estate tail in the Highland Park Estate, Wellington, and in the Heaton Park Estate. The whole of the Heaton Park Estate and the greater part of the Highland Park Estate were sold by the trustees under the authority of a special Act of the New Zealand Parliament passed in 1901. The majority in the Court of Appeal decided that under the provisions of that Act William Henry Rhodes Moorhouse could not by means of a disentailing assurance make the proceeds of sale his own absolute property. The appeal to the Privy Council was on the latter portion only of the Court of Appeal's judgment. The two divisions of the Court of Appeal specially sat together for the purposes of the case. On the first point the court was unanimous, but on the second point there was a majority of five judges to two, the dissenting judgment being delivered by Mr. Justice Ostler, with whom Mr. Justicte Blair concurred.