'LAMENTABLY LOW'

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 117, 13 November 1935, Page 11

'LAMENTABLY LOW'

BUSINESS MORALITY

SALE OF CHRYSLER SHARES

COMMENTS BY JUDGE ■United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received November 13, 1.20 p.m.) LONDON, November 12. "Mr. Chrysler is said to be one of the foremost American industrialists, but some of his answers show his standard of business morality to be lamentably low." With these and othir severe comments, Mr. Justice Atkinson delivered the King's Bench Division judgment after the 6b days" hearing against a group of defendants representing Chrysler undertakings in favour of Mr. Arnold de, la Poer, of Cadogari Court, London, and a Canadian company known as the Suffolk Investment Company. The plaintiffs claimed that Mr. de la Poer in 1928 was forced by threats and misrepresentations of the defendants to sell at an under-value the shares he held in Chrysler Motors, Limited, which, in 1925, he received under a sales agreement from the Sales Corporation. The Judge said: "Mr. Chrysler and the other defendants did not hesitate through their counsel -to charge Mr. de la Poer and another with conspiring to give false evidence, of forgery, deception, and blackmail, although they must know that there was not the slightest justification. lam convinced that the real reason for the terminaion of the sales agreement with the English company was that the English market has become very profit.- . able, in sharp contrast to the situation when the Sales Corporation sold to the plaintiffs. Mr. Justice Atkinson gave judgment for £3500, with costs for Mr. de la Poer, with interest from March 1, 1928, and £36,000, and interest over the same period for the Suffolk Investment Company. He agreed to hear counsel regarding the allocation of the damage* among | the corporation and its subsidiaries. It is unofficially estimated that the cosvs will exceed £40,000.