SUPREME COURT

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 August 1930, Page 2

SUPREME COURT

BANKRUPT’S LAST CHANCE. [per press association.] NEW PLYMOUTH, August 22. Having been convicted on six counts of breaches of the Bankruptcy Act, Eert Thomas appeared before Justice Ostler for sentence, but the matter was deferred until Monday. His Honor expressed a desire to give effect to the jury’s recommendation to mercy, but he was of opinion that such a recommendation was intended to be conditional upon the prisoner abandoning his fraudulent conduct. The Judge also expressed the opinion that Thomas had emmand of money from the qale of his farm, whether it was in his wife’s name or not, and he thought .be was able to discharge his debts to two creditors. He therefore deferred sentence for a few days to give the prisoner an opportunity of thinking the matter over and abandoning his fraudulent conduct. If he did not do so, his Honor intimated that he would consider it his duty, in the public interest, to inflict the heaviest penalty the law permited him to impose.

Amongst the charges on which Thomas was found guilty was one that he had left New Zealand with property, the proceeds of the the farm, and that he had not disclosed the whole of his assets to his creditors. t SALESMAN IMPRISONED. CHRISTCHURCH, August 22. In the Supreme Court -to-day, Charles Henry Lee Walker was convicted on a charge of having received £lOO on terms requiring hi mto pay it to John McLeod, and of having failed to do so, thereby committing theft. Walter, acting as a land salesman, received a cheque for £lOO as a deposit on a sale of McLeod’s property. He cashed the cheque, but failed lo hand over either the total sum to his principal or the total sum less commission, although frequent applications were made to him for it. Walter was sentenced to imprisonment for eighteen months. HAZLETT CASE. AUCKLAND, August 22. When the case in which Cecil Hazlett, farmer, of North Tairei, seeks a writ of habeas corpus securing his releatse from the Inebriates’ Home on Rotoroa Island, was called in the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Smith said he was unable to give judgment then, as had been expected when the hearing concluded on Monday, as he had to proceed to Hamilton at the end of this week. It would be some time before judgment could be delivered. He directed that the applicant should be released on bail until September 9.