CLAIM FOR £10,000

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 95, 23 April 1935, Page 16

CLAIM FOR £10,000

AN ALLEGED 1.0. U.

SIR T. UPTON'S ESTATE

A WILL-MAKING MAN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, March 30.

Mr. Hugh Godfrey Nicholson, an engineer, of the Swan Hotel, Walton-on-Thames, claimed £10,000 from the estate of the late Sir Thomas Lipton, on the strength of an 1.0. U. he possessed. The case was heard by Mr. Justice Macnaghten, and lasted for several days.

In giving judgment, his Lordship said: "The conclusion I have arrived at is that the story put forward by the plaintiff is, as the defendants contend, a tissue of falsehoods, for the most part of recent invention. My judgment must be for the defendants, with costs."

Mr. Van den Berg, K.C., for Mr. Nicholson, said that Sir Thomas Lipton gave his client an 1.0. U. for £10,000 on September 17, 1927, at Sir Thomas's home at Old Southgate, and agreed at the same time to discharge his liability by leaving Mr. Nicholson a legacy'of £ 10,000—which, unhappily, he did not do. Sir Thomas and Mr. Nicholson were great friends, and Mr. Nicholson was continually on Sir Thomas's yachts and at his house. He would produce photographs showing touching farewells between them when Sir Thomas Went to America or elsewhere. The only defence that had been put in, beyond a request for formal proof, was a statement that nothing was admitted.

Counsel told a story of how. Sir Thomas, in 1906, promised to invest £10,000 in a company called the Britannia Engineering Company, of which Mr. Nicholson was a director. On five occasions, according to the story, Sir Thomas promised this amount, but failed to pay it

Mr. Nicholson, in evidence, said that he lost more than £30,000 when the Britannia Engineering Company, in which Sir Thomas Lipton promised to invest £10,000, became insolvent. An entry of £10,000 in a bankbook produced was paid out by him. in default of the £10,000, which ought to have been paid by Sir Thomas. If Sir Thomas had paid, money would also have been put in by Lord Dewar; | and' the company would probably have been saved. A HOTEL LUNCHEON. i Recalling a luncheon at the Savoy Hotel with Sir. Thomas' Lipton and Sir John Ferguson in 1924, Mr. Nicholson said: "Sir Thomas .did not do much about the £10,000. He was in rather a jovial mood, with such expressions as 'There is always a barrel organ and a monkey to be had.'" When he subsequently saw Sir Thomas at Torquay he found him worried about the state of Liptons, the shares having' dropped from 30s to 13s. Sir Thomas • promised to pay him the £10,000 if he could obtain. Sir John Ferguson's assistance, saying: "What is £ 10,000 in a case like this, if a man like Sir John Ferguson can make your shares double themselves in a few years." Later he adopted a "hedging" attitude, and said, "I am not going to die yet.!' • Mr. Nicholson, cross-examined by Mr. T. J. O'Connor, K.C., said that in 1905 or 1906 the late Mr. William Whiteley, Sir Thomas Lipton, and Sir Thomas Dewar (late Lord Dewar) lunched at his flat.

"Dewar told Sir Thomas about this wonderful motor-car business," he went on, "and said it was going to be the most wonderful business in the world. He said he'was' putting up £10,000, and asked Sir Thomas if he would do the same. When Mr. Whiteley left, I went found to Sir Thomas Dewar's flat with Sir Thomas Lipton, and Sir Thomas said he was quite prepared to put up £ 10,000 straight away." >

Mr.' O'Connor: He was quite prepared to put £10,000 into a business of which he. knew-nothing?—Yes. We raced to Colchester to see the works, and Sir Thomas knocked over a coffeestall.

Mr. O'Connor: The only confirmation of Sir Thomas's promise is a I letter which you say he gave to Sir Thomas DejVar, who is now dead, and which nobody has ever'seen?—Everybody has seen it. ';", AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN. Mr, Alfred Bowker, a solicitor, a former deputy chairman and director of Liptons, "Ltd., said he used to act as solicitor to Sir Thomas Lipton. "I was perhaps the closest confidant he had for many years, offhand on," he said. "I knew him intimately for 28 years.} He was "an extraordinary man, and had a colossal brain, but he did not let his right hand know what his left hand was doing. I made a large number of wills for him, and I don't know how many, codicils. : Sometimes Sir Thomas would make a will in London with a firm of solicitors and the next day he would make one with us. On April 27, 1930," continued Mr. Bowker, "he lunched with Sir Thomas aboard the Erin and, during the lunch, Sir Thomafe said: 'My old friend, Mr. Hugh Nicholson, is coming down presently to see me.' After Mr.. Nicholson arrived the three of them sat together oh deck. Sir Thomas said: 'Some of my friends have stuck to me all through.; Mr. Nicholson here, for instance, has stuck to me right through. He has given me advice right, down to the sale of my shares, and he has helped me with very influential people." OFT-REPEATED STORIES. "Sir Thomas would never think to approach a person himself, but always had a go-between," observed Mr. Bowker. After the remark of Sir Thomas Lipton which he had just quoted (Mr. Bowker went on), Mr. Nicholson said that Sir Thomas had very handsomely compensated' him. Mr. Nichplson leaned across to Sir Thomas and asked "in a stage whisper" if he minded his showing Mr. Bowker some papers. Sir Thomas nodded assent, and Mr. Nicholson1 then produced a case from his pocket and took out an 1.0. U. for £10,000, which he handed to Mr. Bowker, together' witli some papers about the Britannia works. Asked if he had ever seen an 1.0. U. signed by Sir Thomas Lipton, Mr. Bowker replied that he had received memoranda or notes of debts from Sir Thomas himself. "He often borrowed money from me when he had it in his pocket" he added. "Sir Thomas was hard up for some time, though you would not believe it."

Further questioned, Mr. Bowker recalled, that Sir Thomas was fond of telling stories. "He was a great personality. There is no question that he was a great man." 8 THE DEFENDANTS' CASE.

At the close of the evidence for Mr. Nicholson, Mr. O'Connor submitted that'no case had been made out. It was an action against executors, the origin of which, he said, was stated to be as long ago as 1906. A considerable burden therefore rested upon Mr. Nicholson to establish what his case was. As far as the 1.0. U. was concerned, it was, of course, a mere piece of evidence, and the words upon it— incidentally put there by Mr. Nicholson himself —were not conclusive to the facts that they stated. Every person connected with the transactions

which had been mentioned was dead, and a particular burden rested with Mr. Nicholson to particularise his claim. There was no evidence of Sir Thomas Lipton having promised to leave £10,000 as a legacy on the promissory note. The evidence was merely that, after the making of the promissory note, Sir Thomas said something to the effect that it would save him £5000, and spoke of the high rate of death duties. There was no evidence of the contract upon which Mr. Nicholson was suing. "Wherever you really can test this case by any measure it falls to pieces," said Mr. O'Connor. Mr. Justice Macnaghten, in a judgment occupying nearly two and a half hours, said the executors did not dispute that the signature on the 1.0. U. was the genuine signature of Sir Thomas Lipton. In those circumstances there was no plea thatfc Sir Thomas, though of great. age, was in any respect incompetent, or that he signed the document unwittingly. It followed that the contention put forward for Mr. Nicholson that the case must be considered on the footing that the 1.0. U. was genuine, and was .written in respect of an acknowledged debt, must be upheld. ■ Jt thus devolved upon the executors to show that there was, in fact, no dekit due to Mr. Nicholson from Sir Thomas, and if they could establish that' Mr. Nicholson's "cjaim, must ,fail. . ? , "TISSUE OF FALSEHOODS." His Lordship found that much of Mr. Nicholson's evidence was not true. "I regret to have to say that I find myself unable to place any reliance on the evidence of Mr. Bowker," said the Judge. "As I have found that the story that Mr. Nicholson' tells about the fourth and fifth episodes is untrue^ it follows that Sir Thomas could not have said to Mr. Bowker. the words which Mr. Bowker said he used. That being so, it follows that Mr. Bowker must have got that matter, not from Sir Thomas, but from Mr. Nicholson."

His Lordship concluded in the words quoted at the beginning, that the story put forward by plaintiff iivas a tissue of falsehoods, and he gave* judgment for the defendants, with costs.