ORDER FOR COSTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 67, 22 March 1929, Page 17

ORDER FOR COSTS

A DIVORCE ACTION

JUDGE'S DISCRETION

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, 22nd January.

Granting a decree nisi with costs to Mrs. Julia Gribble, of Oakleigh Square, Mornington crescent, London, on the ground of the misconduct of her husband, David C. Gribble. Mr. Justice Bateson allowed the wife the whole of the costs of the suit, despite the fact that it was a poor person's case.

In this undefended petition, Mrs. Julia Gribble, nee Young, Bought the dissolution of her marriage with Mr. David Curie Gribble, formerly an inspector in the service of the London General Omnibus Company, on the ground of his adultery with Edith Mildred Mountford at the Masonic Hotel, Gisborne, Now Zealand, in September, 1926. The marriage took place at the Holborn Registry Office, on 18th February, 1926, and it was alleged that in the summer of that year the respondent went out to New Zealand with the woman Mountford. Mr. T. Bucknill, who appeared for the petitioner, submitted that it was a monstrous thing that a man who could afford to go with another woman to New Zealand and live with her out there should be let off paying the costs of his wife's solicitors. He thought that there were "special circumstances" in thia case to bring it within Rule 31 B. of the Poor Persons Rules and to justify the Court in ordering profit costs. He did not suggest tbat such an order would necessarily be executed in this case, but ho made this submission to draw attention to a matter of public interest and for guidance in future similar cases where services wore given by the legal profession gratuitously on the assumption that the husbands had no means with which to pay ordinary costs. Mr. Justice Bateson, in exercising his discretion and making an order for profit costs, pointed out that the respondent apparently left his wife on the best of terms and then went off to New Zealand with another woman.