ENQUIRY INTO THE MUNICIPAL ELECTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3196, 26 September 1881, Page 3

ENQUIRY INTO THE MUNICIPAL ELECTION.

•*At the close of the usual business in the Resident Magistrate's Court this morning, Mr Cornford, addressing the Court, said he appeared in support of a petition which had been lodged by Mr R. G. Graham and two other burgesses against the election of Mr John Thomas Renouf to a seat in the Borough Council. The; petition was lodged in accordance with section 61 of the Municipal Corpora_lb_ Act, and flection 50 of the Local Elections Act. On the Bth of September the election was held and Mr Renouf was declared duly elected, but it had since transpired tbat'Mr Renouf was under a bond as security for the due performance of a drainage contract entered into with the Corporation. G. W. Cullen, Registration Officer for the Borough of Napier, was called, and gay. evidence that there were two candidates at the recent election, and that Mr 3ohn Thomas Renouf had been declared duly elected. M.N. Bower was called, and produced a bond in £400 for the due performance of a sewerage contract by Messrs Tait and Mills. The bond was subsisting at the time of the election. Nothing bad occurred to set aside the bond; it was in full force on the Bth September. Mr .Renouf had put in a document purporting to be a resignation of his office as nnnnfiillor.

Mr Cornford submitted that, taking the section in the Municipal Corporations Act and the section in the Local Elections Act together in view of this bond, Mr Renouf was not capable of being elected to the office of a Councillor. He asked, therefore, that the election of Mr Renouf might be declared void, and that Mr R. G. Graham might be declared duly elected. He briefly referred to a number of decisions given in English cases of a similar character. The clause in the Municipal Corporations Act as regards this case would read "anyone concerned in a contract with the Borough is incapable of being elected." Mr Renouf was deeply concerned in this contract of Tait and Mills; he might be called upon as a Councillor to consider the imposition of certain penalties on the contractors, and as, if the contractors failed to carry out the contract, he would have to carry it out, he would be sitting in judgment on his own case. It was for the Court to say if this contingent liability did not vitiate the election. He submitted that the declaration of the election of Mr Renouf was improperly made, and that Mr Graham should be declared duly elected* His Worship said that, at the time of the election, Mr Renouf was incapable of being elected. The words of the clause in the Act were as wide as they were capable of being made. The word " concerned " was an exceedingly wide one; it would refer not only to a share in the profits, but to a liability for the losses. Such loss might arise from the bond

signed by Mr Renouf; the contractors might fail in some of the particulars specified in the contract, and the question of imposing penalties might be considered, and the surety would be sittifig in the Council and -jonsidering his own case, Or the contractors might fail altogether, and the surety be called upon to carry out the contract. The Court found that the election was void, and declared R. G. Graham, the next highest candidate, duly elected. The costs of the enquiry, £2 2s for counsel's fee, and £3 12s for advertising, to be paid by the candidate petitioned against within one week.