DUTY OF DEALERS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 23, 27 July 1933, Page 13

DUTY OF DEALERS

SECOND-HAND ARTICLES l

ENTRIES IN PURCHASE BOOK

Tho importance of second-hand dealers observing the provisions of the Second-hand Dealers Act relating to the entry by them in their seeond-haiid purchase book of articles bought secondhand was stressed by Mr. Justice Eced in summing up to a jury in tlie Supremo Court today.

His Hqiioiu1 said in the first place that the view was sometimes expressed that receivers were- worse than thieves. Under the Second-hand Dealers Act second-hand dealers were required to keep a book into which all seeond-liand articles purchased by them must be entered. The reason for that was that if some article was known to have been stolen the police could go to the second-hand dealers in the course of their inquiries and ask to sec the purchase book. Tho keeping of a secondhand dealer's book and the entering of articles in that way w.as of the greatest importance. If, the book were not kept and articles bought second-hand were not entered, the whole object of the Act was gone.

His Honour also referred to what constituted a second-hand, article. He said that a. second-hand article was not defined, in the Act, but it was perfectly obvious from the Act' that an article purchased from1 an itinerant person, one, for instance, who did not iii the normal course of events trade in the particular line ho offered for sale, should, be assumed to be second-hand. If a man went to a second-hand dealer and offered to sell him a pioee of jewellery and the second-hand dealer bought the jewellery, it was his duty to enter tho purchase in his book.