THE WRONG DEFENDANT

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 116, 12 November 1935, Page 4

THE WRONG DEFENDANT

AW INSANITARY DRAIN

PUBLIC TRUST PROPERTY

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, November 11. "The Public Trustee has been extremely dilatory in attending to a matter affecting public health," said Mr. W. R. McKean,.S.M., in the Onehunga Magistrate's Court, when A. S. Faire, District Public. Trustee, was cited as the defendant in an information laid by the Manukau County Council, charging him with having failed to abate a nuisance on a property in Mangere. Evidence of the sanitary inspector for the Manukau County' Council showed that following an outbreak of scarlet fever, which had been traced to an overflowing cesspool on the property, the Health Department had ordered remedial measures to be taken. Witness said the property had been taken over by the Public Trustee, who had let the premises to tenants and had been collecting the rent The District Public Trustee had since June last been repeatedly warned to effect repairs to the drain, but had failed to do so until after the information had been laid. Counsel for the defence contended that neither Mr. Faire nor the Public Trustee was the owner of the property, but he admitted that the District Public Trustee was administering the estate as agent for the owner and was collecting rent. To effect repairs to the drain, he said, would be inconsistent with the powers of an agent a man named Platt being the real owner. The Magistrate held that the Public Trustee, Wellington, was the legal owner, who was defined by the Act as the person entitled to receive rent, whether on his own account or as agent of any other person. He considered, therefore, that the wrong person had been cited as defendant. The Magistrate was consequently unable to enter a conviction against the defendant, and dismissed the information.