FURNITURE PRICE HALVED BY COURT

Grey River Argus, 20 September 1949, Page 8

FURNITURE PRICE HALVED BY COURT

WELLINGTON, September 16. Judgment for £250 has been awarded by' Chief Justice Sir Humphrey O’Leary, in favour of a plaintiff who claimed in a Supreme Court action last week that he had been overcharged for furniture in a house in Wellington, for which he sought vacant possession. The facts established at the hearing were that the plaintiff answered a newspaper advertisement offering vacant possession of the house, the incoming tenant to pay £5OO for the furniture.

In his judgment, Chief Justice O’Leary found that the defendant had stipulated, or demanded, and accepted as a condition of the plaintiff getting tenancy of the house, the payment for its furniture and effects. He was satisfied that the sum accepted was in excess of the fair selling value, and that the plaintiff was entitled to recover the amount of such excess.

"Plaintiff was blinded by the desire to get the house and failed to consider properly the value of the contents, and I think defendant, took advantage of this”, he said in giving judgment. The fair soiling valu P of the furniture was then lixed at £2’so and judgment was entered accordingly.