CLAIM AGAINST EMPLOYER

Evening Star, Issue 21974, 9 March 1935, Page 4

CLAIM AGAINST EMPLOYER

WRONGFUL DISMISSAL ALLEGED [Per United Prss* Association.] WELLINGTON, March 8. The hearing was continued to-day_of the case of James Marshall versus William Cable and Co., in which the plaintiff is claiming £3,000 for alleged wrongful dismissal. Giving evidence after the conclusion of the case for the defence, Marshall denied the allegations of neglect or incompetence in connection with various engineering contracts undertaken by the linn. He denied that he demanded any bonus before going on with the work of tho steamer Golden Harvest. He had been working without any real difference until the question of bonuses arose at the end of tho financial year, when he refused £SO as a bonus on the alleged year’s profit of £I,OOO. Addressing the court, Mr Stevenson, counsel for the defendant, said the defendant alleged that tho plaintiff, while ou the way to the Golden Harvest job in James Cable’s motor car, had demanded a bonus of £250 before he would commence the job. It was strange under those conditions for a man to put such a request. The Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) : No honourable (inn would keep in its employ a man who is what the ordinary citizen would cal! a blackmailer. Even if by dismissing him they risked an action for damages, they should dismiss him immednately. Counsel agreed that such circumstances as he alleged amounted to a kind of blackmail. Even if not legal blackmail, it was what the ordinary citizen would call blackmail. A little later His Honour said there would be justification in such circumstances as counsel alleged foryiny man being dismissed immediately. : Any selfrespecting employer would ini mediately dismiss such a man. “Yet Cable did not dismiss him.” said His Honour, “ but kept him on. There was not a word in the minutes. Although all previous matters are harked back to and put in long minutes there is not a word of this.” The ease is unfinished.