DUAL HARDSHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 23, 28 January 1944, Page 3

DUAL HARDSHIP

A TENANCY PUZZLE

During the course of a tenancy case at Lower Hutt yesterday counsel representing the plaintiff and the defendant each remarked on the difficulty presented by the case. The plaintiff was the father of five children and was living in a four-roomed house which housed ten people, and his plea to obtain possession of a house he had purchased was one of hardship. The defendant had done all in his power to find another house, and there were circumstances which made it impossible for the family to board. Mr. W. C. Harley, S.M., who occupied the Bench, said that if counsel had found the case difficult he found it still more so. The law said that if the plaintiff could prove certain things, among which was a greater degree of hardship than that of the defendant, •the plaintiff was entitled to succeed. The plaintiff had certainly proved that, and was entitled to an order, yet the Bench had to use common sense in the matter, and a decision to put the defendant out on the1 street really took the case no further. "In spite of what we read in the papers about the Government housing policy," continued Mi. Harley, "I don't know of one case in which the State has assisted the Court, or ttie people who put their cases before the Court, by finding, houses for the dispossessed. It is surely just such cases that State housing should cater for. If a very small number of houses were allotted to meet such cases the position would be relieved. As it is, it is almost impossible for the Court to give justice. In spite of the fact that the defendant has nowhere to go, I will have to make an order for the plaintiff, but I will suspend it for two months till we see -what happens."