NO OFFENCE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21899, 18 December 1945, Page 4

NO OFFENCE

MAGISTRATE’S DECISION

LAND SALE SUGGESTION (P.A.) NEW PLYMOUTH, Dec. 18. If no agreement for sale and purchase was entered into between the parties, it was no offence for a vendor to suggest that the prospective purchaser of a property should consider paying a price different from that which the Land Sales Committee might fix, said- Mr. W. H. Woodward, S.M., in the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court in a reserved judgment in a case in which Mrs. Hylda Stockman was charged that on September 17 at New Plymouth, she, being a principal, attempted to induce another person, Jeffery Owen Kill, to enter into a transaction or arrangement that was intended to be inconsistent with an application to be made under the Servicemen’s Settlement and Land Sales Act and amendment. Hill's evidence, said Mr. Woodward, was that Mrs. Stockman wanted £I3OO for the property iq question, and she suggested he would have to pay the difference between that figure and the value tlie land sales committee might fix or there would be no sale. He was agreeable to paying £ 1300, but no agreement had been reached or entered into and the negotiations were broken off by Mrs. Stockman’s selling to some other person The magistrate said it was an offence to try to induce any other person to enter any arrangement which was inconsistent or intended to be inconsistent with any application to the committee and the price which it. might fix as the value of the property. It was, however, no offence if a suggestion was made but no agreement was entered into for a deal, because no application could be made for approval of sale without the parties entering into an agreement for sale and purchase. The clause in the Act must be strictly construed, and because there had been no agreement in this case the information would be dismissed.