OWNERSHIP DISPUTED

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 100, 25 October 1916, Page 8

OWNERSHIP DISPUTED

MONEY PAID INTO COURT

JUDGMENT IN SINGULAR ACTION.

;;;A judgment of special interest has fbeen given by his Honour the Chief JusItfce (Sir Robert Stout) in connection liyith a'ca'se heard in Chambers one day i?ast week".'

■The case was one in which a claim !br £1000 damages for assault, brought ;by R. W. Young against H. A. Monro, was set down for hearing by the Supreme Court at Blenheim in June last. ;Two days before the hearing the defendant Monro paid into Court the sum of £175, with a denial of liability, and on ihe morning of the day fixed for the 'hearing Monro committed suicide. Seven .days afterward.3 the plaintiff Young notified defendant's counsel that ho would take ?.the amount (£175) paid into Court in 'settlement. The question his Honour .was asked to decide 'was whether the amount was the property of the plain'tvff or of the representative of the defendant.

;i;lt was contended by. Mr. H. F. ;O'Leary, who appeared for Mrs. Edith C. MonrOj widow of the deceased, that ;£he death of Monro abated the action 'then pending in the Supreme Court, and that therefore Young had no claim on the money paid into Court.

:;'Mr. C. H. Mills, of Blenheim, who 'Appeared for the plaintiff Young, agreed ,that the death of Monro had abated the action, but contended that the money •paid info Court was a conditional pay'.rilent to the plaintiff; also that the dehaving admitted the assault, •though pleading provocation, and the death of the defendant having caused the "abatement of the action, it was beyond Jthe power of the defendant's widow (and 'executrix) to show a better right to the "money than that possessed by the piainitiff- ' . ..

;;:His Honour held that as the money 'had been paid into Court with a denial of liability it did not become the property of the plaintiff until, notice of ac•ceptance by him was given. Notice was not given until after the death of the defendant, and by the time notice was given the action1 had abated, and the notice was therefore.of no effect. iTiie money therefore became, immediately on defendant's death, the property of his executrix. His Honour ordered that the money should be paid over to Mrs. Monro.