A FINE POINT IN LAW.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2320, 26 March 1914, Page 3

A FINE POINT IN LAW.

Yesterday, Mr A. M. Ongley, acting for defendant, raised a fine point of "general interest to the.commercial community. Evidence showed that P. A. Mercer transferred certain book debts to W.H. Murray, and each debtor received written notice from Mercer that the debt had been transferred. Yesterday, before Mr.J. W. Poynton, S.M., Murray sued one of the debtors, L. Titchener, for £4 ss, the amount originally clue to Mercer. Defendant wrote prior to the issue of the summons stating that he had a contra account against Mercer, and refused to recognise Murray. On the issue of the summons, defendant filed notice to defend, and deposited- his counter claim in the Court at Hamilton, where he resides. On the day appointed for

hearing at Hamilton, defendant did not appear, and yesterday. Mr J. Power, who acted for Murray, asked for judgment on the claim. Evidence was given 'hy . Murray and C. Grut that the. debts had been purchased from Mercer, but Mr Ongley submitted that there was only one legal way of assigning a debt, and that by deed in writing under the hand of the -assignor to assignee, generally termed a deed of assignment, which was subject to stanrp duty. The serving of notice to the debtor by the assignor that the debt was payable to the assignee did not constitute a legal assignment, and if plaintiff chose to adopt a cheap means of 'attaining' Lis object by evading stamp dirty-on a deed, that was his business, and he should be prepared to forfeit when the question was

raised in Court. He also pleaded that there could only be one way of proving an assignment and that by production of the deed of assignment. His Worship adjourned the case to enable Mercer's evidence to be taken.